The Last Dance is over
Thoughts? Does anyone think this changes younger people's opinions with LeBron?
Favorite moments.
Talking about winning and being great has a price.
It was a bad pizza!
Steve Kerr was fucking clutch
The last moments of the Utah shot. Incredible.
Pippen and Jordan putting maybe the two best playoff dunks in NBA history on Ewing.
The reporters before the game 5 vs the Cavs
The music
Horace Grant calling the Pistons bitches
What this tells us more than anything is Michael Jordan Is a Man of Focus, Commitment and Sheer Fucking Will. The end.
Couldn’t beat the Pistons until they got old(er).
That's pretty typical in the NBA. Pippen didn't finally hit apex until 90 or 91. This won't be popular here but Pistons fans will always be butt hurt about their place. Lakers and Celtics before them and the bulls run after. They were a really good team. Very deep. But they got two titles. You'll never be in the same sentence with guys and teams that have 3-6 titles.
"Guys and teams that have 3-6 titles" is not a long list. Many NBA franchises have never won a championship, and only a small number have won back-to-back.
If Jordan is the GOAT (and I'm in agreement), it's tough not to give the team that stymied him three consecutive years in the playoffs its due. Jordan and the rest of the Bulls themselves do it in all these interviews.
Good. GOAT though he is Fuck him and the whiny ass Bulls in regards to the Pistons. Bad Boys were legit rugged winners and worthy champs. Case in point of the double standard...The Pistons walk off was "pouting" (it wasn't. It was pretty common back in the day) but MJ spitting on a Pizza when he had the Flu was because he was so "driven". Come on man.
I learned that instead of the GOAT he is more donkey ass.
Imagine what could have been had Isiah not sprained his ankle in game 6. The last 2 games were decided by a total of 4 points. Damn Lakers.,,,
Except for the fact that Isiah and the Bad Boys had winning playoff records against Jordan, Magic and Bird.
True. I'll bet the Pistons care way more about head-to-head than, say, actual championships won. Most people think that way.
I mean that's how bragging rights work. The Pistons played them four years and won three. They have nothing to do with the fact that teams later on couldn't beat the Bulls.
Pistons got hosed against the Lakers. They should have 3 titles. The problem the Pistons have is that no one respects their style of play b/c they think it violates the spirit of the game.
They had a chance at 4 titles. I can still here Most, "Bird steals the ball!". A lot of pundits don't give the Pistons their due, they were very underrated.
Isiah speaks about how the Celtics taught the Pistons how to become Champions through adversity. They were ferocious adversaries but there was a certain respect.
Jordan didn’t feel that way about anyone. He hated the Pistons for bullying him before he finally could reach the mountain top.
Zeke’s performance against the Lakers in Game 6 of the NBA finals was one of the best performances ever. If not for a phantom foul on Laimbeer the Pistons likely win that series. Thomas ankle was toast for game 7.
I don’t know about that. How many guys have 3-6 titles?
I would put those Pistons at their peak below the Lakers, Celtics, and Bulls at their peak - for sure.
But - the Pistons won three titles, not two. That wasn't a foul on Laimbeer in Game 6 in 88. Three titles, not two, and you'll never convince me otherwise. La la la can't hear you.
I wouldn't say their peak level was worse than the other three. Bird's Celtics never won back to back and the Lakers pulled it off by the skin of their teeth, as noted.
You could say that they had a shorter peak than the others, but when they were at their best they were right up there.
My key take away is that the Pistons and Isiah still live rent-free in Jordan's and the Bulls' heads.
Head-to-head playoff record during the Bad Boys / Jordan era:
Series: Pistons 3 - Bulls 1
Games: Pistons 12 - Bulls 10
OMG, the no-look-Isiah-to-Salley-reverse-stuff may be the coolest back door jam ever. Definitely a 10! (50 seconds into the clip)
Yea I don't think that's the case. Jordan went on to get 6 titles. The Pistons teams were part of that journey but per usual, a new fancy catch phrase "lives rent free", gets misused misapplied.
I'm going to get negged to hell for this, but I don't care.... this is THE most Michigan Man comment you could have posted. When 6 (SIX!) Championships are not enough to convince you, resort to overall record to prove your point. Detroit was a hurdle initially, to which Chicago eventually overcame and then ran away from, doing things Detroit never did. But sure, Detroit lives in their head.
And this comment was made by a Pistons fan.
I don't think people are saying the Pistons accomplished more in total than the Bulls did, that would be pretty silly. But they did win three of the four head-to-head series, that's in the record books. And Jordan does still seem a little salty about it.
(And remember, the Bulls won that second three-peat with Rodman. They needed a Bad Boy to get back to the top.)
Did you watch the documentary? Jordan is salty about everything!
Yes, but I maintain he's extra salty about this. This has nothing to do with me being a Detroit homer, it's my scientific analysis.
Needed Rodman? No one would touch him after his Spurs drama. The spurs took freaking Will Perdue for him. Rodman needed the bulls to prove he could not blow a team up. He was put on the perfect team for that. They helped each other. By 98 he's pretty done unfortunately.
The fact that Rodman was undervalued by other franchises at the time doesn't change that he was a future Hall of Famer who put them over the top. They don't win another three-peat with Will Perdue playing the 4.
I'm not sure that Dennis Rodman was undervalued nor am I sure that he was a Hall of Famer before he joined the Bulls. Remember, the Pistons released Rodman after he was found in his car with a shotgun and with the Spurs, he didn't bond with his teammates at all (David Robinson recently said Rodman was "destructive to the team") & constantly butted heads with the front office. Yes he performed on the court but his off the court antics, same that he did with the Bulls, led the Spurs to be happy to get rid of him and surprised to find a trading partner.
Who knows what happens to Rodman's career if the Bulls don't make that trade but that trade only happens because both Phil Jackson & Michael Jordan knew how to treat Rodman, by letting him escape and "be himself" and hold him accountable.
Dennis Rodman was a Hall of Famer because of his time with the Pistons AND the Bulls. Without his stint with the Bulls, I don't think he is.
Starter with 5 rings, right? Drop the mike. See ya.
The Bulls only won 6 titles because Magic, Bird and the Bad Boys aged out. I'm sorry, but beating the Blazers, Suns and the Jazz is not nearly the gauntlet that teams had to face in the 80s.
That's just a little bit disingenuous. Yes, that is the series record. Why? Because the Pistons only made it to the EC finals in '91 after Chicago got over the hump. During the Pistons heyday, they managed two championships, back to back. That's fantastic.
The Chicago Bulls won six out of eight, with two 3-peats. That is unmatched in history. Chicago was by far the better team, and had they had better coaching earlier, I don't think the Pistons win B2B.
It's not the Pistons' fault that the Bulls never faced them before 1988, either. That goes in both directions.
And again, when comparing the two, there is the Rodman problem: in a virtual matchup, does he play against himself? When the Bulls needed to get back to the top, they knew they needed a Bad Boy. In fact, they had three of them on that '96 team.
It doesn't really go in both directions. The Bulls won 5 championships in years they didn't play the Pistons. And the 94 and even 95 teams were better than the Pistons so basically 7 years of being significantly better afterwards. The Pistons won zero championships in years they didn't play the Bulls and the 85 and 86 Pistons squads were good but nothing special 45 type win teams (and Chicago was a 1 man team at that point). The 87 team is the only really good Pistons team that didn't play the Bulls (and would have killed them). So yeah, had they played every year from 87 to 98 during the entirety of both teams' peaks the Pistons would have won 4 not 3 and the Bulls would have won 8 not 1.
Bulls didn't need a bad boy, they needed a PF to replace Grant. And 3 Bad Boys? Salley and Buddha were bench filler at that point in their careers and only Rodman had a meaningful role.
The Bulls' overall window of opportunity was longer, sure. The big thing was that Isiah's body started breaking down relatively early. He was only 30 in 1991 but had a bad wrist injury that year, and his decline began. He only played three more years and wasn't a superstar anymore, just a good player. He really could have benefitted from today's rehab/training methods.
Rodman was a stud though. I'll defend him all day long. Chuck Daly and Phil Jackson - two HoF coaches - understood how to handle him. His other coaches tried to get into a battle of wills with him and wasted his ability.
Also he broke his hand punching Bill Laimbeer in the head.
The Bulls had a lot of perfect things that all came together.
- They had the GOAT.
- But next to the GOAT, they had Pippen, an incredible number two.
- They had a great coach in Phil Jackson, who was critical in keeping all the players happy. Without Jackson, Rodman wouldn't have worked. Most coaches couldn't deal with Rodman.
- When you have a great coach like that, you can make a freak like Rodman an incredible asset.
- Tex Winters, an assistant coach, brought the triangle offense, which was great at that time and place.
- Jackson and Winters had to convince MJ that he couldn't win alone. Once he was willing to have Pippen, and Kukoc, and Rodman, and Kerr, share the offensive burden, well, the Bulls were virtually unstoppable.
- Add to that incredible defense, from MJ, Pippen, Rodman, et. al., and the Bulls become even better.
- Add to that MJ's incredible drive and cruelty, and you have six titles.
Not a great way to look at it. All anyone except Pistons fans remembers is that the Pistons won 2 and the Bulls won 6 because championships are what matter. Those series also coincided with the Pistons' shorter apex period, not the Bulls'. The Bulls really weren't a good team with more than 50 wins until the 90 season. And had they played at all during 92 to 98 the Bulls would have clobbered them but the timing of the series was limited to the front end of the Bulls' run and mostly against a lesser and/or younger Bulls roster.
Pistons fans want to give the Bad Boys all of the credit for forging the Bulls and the process of going through those series helped a bit. But the ascension of the Bulls had much more to do with building out a roster to be more than just Jordan. That first series win against the Bulls in 1988 came against a team that had Charles Oakley, Sam Vincent, Dave Corzine, and Brad Sellers as the #2 to #5 scorers. Pippen and Grant were rookies and no Cartwright or Armstrong. That's the difference, not the Pistons getting old or the Bulls getting tougher, though both occurred to an extent. The Bulls got a real roster besides Jordan and become much better than the Pistons were or ever had been for most of a decade. Neg away!
I'd say it's more the other way around. Thomas appears to spend every waking moment in a never-ending nightmare because he was left off the Olympic team, and nobody outside Michigan ever talks about the Pistons, while Chicago gets recognized as one of the best ever.
However you feel about Isiah, he really got screwed out of an Olympic chance.
-He was on the 1980 team when we decided to boycott the games because they were in the USSR.
-He would have been a lock for the '84 and '88 games if pros had been eligible
-1992 . . . well we know that story.
If he hadn’t been such a poor sportsman maybe he would have been on the 92 team. But alas...
It's interesting, I think this series is sparking renewed interest in the Bad Boy Pistons. They're a key part of the Jordan saga.
People forget how close the Pistons were to a three-peat. That loss in the '88 Finals was excruciating, losing Game 6 by one point on a game-deciding call, and then, despite Isiah's ankle injury, had a chance in Game 7 until Rodman inexplicably decided to shoot a 17-footer on the break in the last minute of the game...
The "Bad Boy" stuff overshadows how talented they were. Isiah, Dumars and Rodman made the Hall of Fame. Aguirre and Laimbeer each made several All-Star teams. Vinnie Johnson probably would have started for a lot of teams. Edwards, Mahorn and Salley had long, productive careers. When a guy like Salley is your 9th best player, wow.
I don't disagree with any of that, really. But you could say basically the same about Chicago getting screwed on a key call vs the Knicks, that would have put them in the finals. They could have had a 4-peat, and had the team stuck together, maybe another.
That was a bad call, I remember that. But it was in the second round and we don't know what would have happened beyond that. The Pistons were one defensive stop from the NBA title when the phantom call was called on Laimbeer.
Fair enough.
The Pistons "getting older" is overblown. The Bulls just got better. Detroit had an amazing run, but if we play the "got older" card, we could say the same about the Celtics and Lakers. Do we want to discredit the Pistons because Bird got older and the Celtics were aging? Do we want to do the same with the Lakers?
I hate these arguments as that is the flow of the game, younger, hungrier teams take the crown from the champs. The reason Jordan was greater than all his contemporaries is he simply wouldn't let this happen, most specifically during the second 3 peat.
The Bulls were broken down and running on fumes, but MJ managed to beat the Pacers and Jazz by dragging his team over the finish line. That's the difference between MJ and all the other greats...he was a sociopath and wouldn't let the younger and arguably more talented teams put a stake in the Bulls.
By comparison the Pistons put the Celts down, and then the Bulls swept the Pistons away, never to be bothered by them again. MJ won 6 and literally dragged that 1998 team to the finish line.
GOAT
Basically. the '89 Pistons were better than the '85 Lakers, '86 Celtics, and the '92 Bulls.
If not for Vinny and AD knocking heads going for that loose ball in Game 7 of the '87 ECF and that absolutely bullshit foul call on Laimbeer in Game 6 in '88, the Pistons would've won 4 straight titles.
Still can't believe they didn't end the last graphic with "And they've been rebuilding ever since."
One ECF since... The way they handled that team still effects them today. No one wants to play for Jerry.
It was implied. They got close to being great during the Derrick Rose years, but not close to the MJ Bulls greatness. Even the "super teams" of today can't match what Chicago did with MJ, Pippen, Grant, Armstrong, and then when Rodman and Kerr were key players.
Was fun watching and recapping my prime hoop watching years in college and pro. Reaffirmed that Jordan is the GOAT. Don't think they win in 1999!
Reaffirmed that Jordan is the GOAT.
And a spectacular a-hole. Still the GOAT, but very different in terms of personality and character than Tom Brady, the NFL GOAT. Maybe that's the nature of b-ball with smaller teams, but still...
I'm not so sure. Tom Brady can and has been seen being quite the asshole. Does it touch Jordan's level? Probably not. But last weekend, his quote of "leadership having a price" was a superb way to sum that up. He was and is an asshole but the context this series helped show helps make that notion make more sense.
Would that mentality and way of going about business thrive in today's landscape? Maybe not but again, some of the biggest winners and leaders have shown us moments of Jordan-esque "asshole" and does to some extent persist.