NO-KG-AI wrote:sjballer03 wrote:lessthanjake wrote:
Have people really said that about the 2004 Pistons? My recollection from that time period is that they were definitely a surprise winner.
At the time people were surprised for sure. But over time they started to explain that the pistons were the 2nd coming of the 80s/90s Bad Boys and that the Lakers were too old to win.
I feel like I see the opposite, where people just assume any team with a superstar would beat them, and that they are a weak champ.
They are one of my more respected title runs tbh. Idc what era it is, I wouldn’t count that team out atainst anyone after watching what they did. I thought they were gonna lose to the Pacers and to the Lakers/Wolves, whatever. But they were nastyyy
Yeah, to me, the 2004 Pistons were a great example of what I think of as the alternate and far more difficult way to build a great team: Which is to not have a major superstar but to have a starting lineup almost entirely filled with multi-time-all-star level guys and then some depth. It’s way harder in recent decades to get a roster like that than it is to have a couple superstars (the most common way to build a great team), because it’s very hard to actually pay that many all-star guys (with the nature of max contracts meaning that you don’t really pay those sorts of guys much less than you do a major superstar). You have to be pretty lucky. But those 2004 Pistons did it—largely by getting a few late-bloomers on really good contracts. I consider the 2014 Spurs to be a similar type of team (while Duncan and Kawhi obviously are far more than multi-time all-stars, due to their ages they were more that level of player at the time), as well as the Bad Boys Pistons. Arguably the Celtics this year are another example of it. It is less common, but the teams that are built that way can be really incredible.
What’s crazy to think about with those Pistons is that they easily could’ve drafted Wade, Carmelo, or Bosh in the 2003 draft, and been even better.
