The NBA regular season ended on Wednesday (April 17), and my beloved Pistons did not advance to the post-season, a fate decided months ago, even before the team's abysmal ten game losing streak in March. The Pistons posted one of the franchise's worst records for a month with one lone win in March (against the NBA's worst team, the Charlotte Bobcats), going 1-13.Though the Pistons showed some spark in April, posting a record of 5-3 with a four game win streak and an impressive victory against playoff-bound Chicago, a 29-53 record on the season left the team in 11th place (out of 15 teams) in the Eastern Conference, 37 games out of first place in the conference, 20.5 games behind Indiana in the Central Division, and nine games behind the eighth playoff spot that went to the Milwaukee Bucks, who managed to secure it with a losing record.
Did this stop my fan love?
Are you kidding?
Given that I work at home, and am no longer a night owl, I record a lot of sporting events to watch while I am working. Though I did delete a lot of the losses, I did not delete all of them. I cannot claim to have watched even half of the 82 regular season games, but I did watch many, enjoying wins against Miami and San Antonio as well as some of the losses because of the play of the new, exciting, young Pistons, the core of the future team. Though Brandon Knight, Andre Drummond, and Greg Monroe are not winning like the championship teams of the past, I am a Pistons fan, so I tune in, I watch, I wear my T-shirts, and from November through April 17th, I record the wins and losses on my score sheet, read the recaps, studied the box scores, and cheer for just one more bucket, one more rebound, one more win.
My love for basketball goes back far into my childhood but the love for the Pistons was more abstract since most the games were not televised locally. We would talk about the Pistons, but it's not the same if one can't watch it. My dad loves basketball, so we watched a lot of it as I was growing up, but he tuned in to Michigan Wolverines basketball more often, especially since the Pistons games were not carried as much outside of Detroit stations.
I discovered my basketball love in college, watching the Celtics and Knicks square off, watching Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Patrick Ewing, and Kareem Abdul Jabar go head to head. Though I could catch more Pistons games at college because I had access to cable TV, my fandom really rocketed into orbit during the Bad Boy era. I graduated from college right about the same time as the Detroit Pistons selected my favorite all time basketball player as the 18th pick in the 1985 draft: Joe Dumars. Paired with the hot, new point guard, Isiah Thomas, the Bad Boys team began to take shape. I was hooked. There were heart breaking losses, especially the 1988 finals in which the Pistons blew a 3-2 series lead to lose to the Lakers in Game Seven. I kept watching, and I was rewarded (as all of us fans were rewarded).Then came 1989 and 1990. Back-to-back championships. THE BAD BOYS. It all looked great until Michael Jordan learned to play team basketball. Despite drafting NBA poster boy Grant Hill, the Pistons did not win anymore championships for FOURTEEN years. With Joe Dumars now at the helm of team operations, the Pistons made smart trades (Rip Hamilton), free agent signings (Chauncey Billups), and draft picks (Tayshaun Prince), and the new era Pistons won the NBA championship in 2004 against the Lakers. If not for Larry Brown (whom I blame for sitting starters in the fourth quarter), the Pistons would have won again in 2005 against the San Antonio Spurs in a decisive game seven.
The Pistons have not been back to the NBA Finals since 2005.
But I watch. I cheer. I bleed the Pistons blue.
-chris tower 1304.19 - 11:55
