The Golden State Warriors just won the NBA title. All anyone wanted to talk about the next day was Kevin Durant.
And Lebron James.
And Stephen Curry in relation to those two superstars. It can be exhausting, this relentless loop of legacy talk, where every game — even every quarter: Curry can’t shoot in the fourth! — is parsed for missed shots and missed moments and turnovers and shot percentages, and he choked or he ain’t that guy or if so-and-so were healthy.
(Michael Jordan, by the way, never missed a shot in the Finals. Or in the playoffs. Or ever.)
Thanks, social media. The cat-and-cucumber videos are one thing — keep them coming, please — but this constant stanning for one player by tearing down another?
Some version of this used to happen in bars, or in offices — remember them? — or wherever sports fans gathered before the digital age. And that was fine. Fun, even. But this? This ’round-the-clock hot-take madness?
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It’s the world we live in, I suppose, where legacies are fought over like a goat in a den of Komodo dragons. Whether any of us enjoy this fight for flesh is another question. Still, I’m afraid it’s here to stay. And if it is, then we’ve got a legacy to change around here.
The Bad Boys are the most disrespected champs in modern NBA history. So what if I happened to be at the Silverdome when the Pistons beat the Boston Celtics to earn a trip to the Finals in 1988? Or if I watched every game? Or if I shed a tear when Isiah Thomas scored 25 in a quarter, hobbling down the court after every make against the LA Lakers in the Finals?
Maybe I didn’t shed a tear. And maybe my fandom in those days — I was new to Michigan and loved hoops — should disqualify my judgment; I lost my fandom long ago, if you were wondering. Besides, this was long before I became a sportswriter.
But then all these legacy takes come with some kind of emotion. Objectivity is not the goal.
Ratings are. Clicks are. Followers are.
Emotion is the point. Nostalgia is part of the equation, too.
When someone argues MJ is superior to LeBron, say, they are often arguing for their youth, for how Jordan made them feel. That’s probably true here, too.
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When I think of the Bad Boys’ title teams, I don’t think about the schematics of their defense, or the way Joe Dumars curled around a screener at the elbow, a pass from Thomas waiting for him, or coach Chuck Daly’s substitution patterns — can you imagine how those decisions would’ve been analyzed in the Twitter era?
No, I think about what it was like to watch them anaconda the other team’s offense. How it made me feel.
It was thrilling. Mostly because it was new. And I’m willing to acknowledge my own (relative) youth, and thus, nostalgia, as part of the memory.
Yet these legacy arguments aren’t all about emotion. There are facts. Numbers. Game-defining plays. Series-defining moments.
And as much as even the facts and numbers get cherry-picked to bolster an argument about why one player or team deserves a place on the legacy chart over another, there are a few things that are immutable:
1) The Pistons were the best defensive team in NBA history when they won their first title in 1989.
2) Their center, Bill Laimbeer, was ahead of his time shooting the 3-pointer.
3) Their leader, Thomas, was the most dominant 6-foot player in league history during his prime.
4) They won their back-to-back titles by beating the three best players in the league (who were also the three most iconic of that time … and maybe ever): Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
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Thomas, even now, takes to social media occasionally to point this out, as he should. Because it’s criminally overlooked.
His Pistons had winning records in the playoffs against the Bulls and Lakers, and a .500 record against the Celtics. You don’t have to look hard to find Thomas responding to a tweet stating this record, or that the Pistons were the only team to beat all three legends in the playoffs.
“Let it be known,” he likes to tweet whenever he sees someone defending the Bad Boys’ legacy.
Those Pistons title teams were arguably as good as the best Celtics or Lakers team. I’d argue their peak was right there with Jordan’s best teams, too.
Jordan didn’t like the Pistons’ style, though. Neither did Chicago coach Phil Jackson, who loved telling cameras it was bad for basketball.
That image stuck for a chunk of NBA fans outside of Michigan, and slowly, their three-year Finals run faded from memory. It’s as if the league scrubbed the Pistons’ reign from the record books, hoping the next generation would think Magic and Bird ceded control of the playoffs directly to Jordan.
You want to talk about legacy?
How about the beautiful offense the Pistons played? They moved without the ball. They shared the ball. Almost everyone could shoot. They spread the floor and attacked and kicked.
The popular memories, though, center around Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn flinging elbows and scowling. Yeah, they did that, certainly. They also boxed out and (legally) defended the post and threw sublime outlet passes to bouncy wings sprinting down the floor.
They defended at an all-time level, sure. But they won titles because they could score, too. That has gotten lost. That happens in a fight over legacy.
Like fans who think Curry can’t defend or make a shot with the game on the line. He can do both. It’s on tape. So is the play of one of the best teams to ever do it.
So, if we’re going to keep battling over legacy every day until the end of time, let’s give a loud shoutout to the Bad Boys, a team too many remember as interlopers when in fact they changed the game.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.