The Crumbling of a Dynasty

A single signboard that was being valiantly held up in Game 4 said it all:

LAKERS HAVE SUPERMAN, PISTONS HAVE KRYPTONITE!

And now, after five games, nothing could be farther from the truth.

The dynasty that was once the Los Angeles Lakers has finally crumbled. In the Palace at Auburn Hills, all that was left for the Lakers were the remains of bruised egos, bitter memories and history in the making. Today June 16th, after five grueling games, it has finally been decided that the Detroit Pistons are better than the Los Angeles Lakers. Never mind the post-season bonuses or the championship banners or even history in the making. Now everybody in the NBA knows the Pistons are better than the Lakers. Yes, including Shaq and Kobe.

What the Detroit Pistons unraveled after Game 5 was a secret that mystified the league for the past half decade: "How do you defeat Shaq, Kobe and the Los Angeles Lakers?"

There will be no more discussions on why Shaq is the most dominant player in the league or how good Kobe is in the clutch because after all, players win as a team; they also lose as one. The Lakers forgot that. They faced a Detroit Pistons team that never complained about the calls the referees made, the shooting background of any arena or who should be getting more touches on the ball. The Los Angeles Lakers forgot how to play championship basketball. Heck, they even forgot how to play amateur ball.


"Here we are in the NBA Finals and we're talking about stuff YOU TELL JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL TEAMS: move the basketball, block out, rebound and limit your turnovers, because they're getting more points off our turnovers than anything else," Cleamons said. "It still comes back to fundamentals."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the court. The Detroit Pistons just kept revving up their engines, fighting their way through comments that they were in the Junior Varsity League of the NBA. They played through a triple overtime loss in New Jersey in the semifinals. They defended their way to victory against the Indiana Pacers who had the Best Defensive Player in their roster. They beat every single team in the NBA and they beat them bad. By the way they made NBA basketball history while they were at it too.

To paraphrase:
"Ever since the NBA adopted the 2-3-2 format in the NBA Finals, no home team has ever swept the middle three games."

These Pistons did it after 48 minutes. Today they might go into the history books as one of the most remembered teams in the history of the NBA not because of the similarity they have with the Bad Boys of old or the fact that they helped bring all sports trophies in the Motor City for this year. They will go down as the only opponents strong enough to beat a Los Angeles Lakers team that seemed to don an armor of invincibility. They will be remembered for the way that they played basketball---as a team. Nobody stood out in the series. There was no single superstar in this Detroit team, no million dollar player who would be demanding the ball each and every possession. One could even argue that Ben Wallace is the heart and soul of this team, but it would be to no avail because it would only echo as much as a whisper lost in an arena full of screaming, rabid basketball fans. No one in this Detroit team would care because all the proof that they need, they already have.

Trophy love. How sweet it is, indeed!

The Detroit Pistons have never been my favorite team until the start of the NBA Finals. I never followed them as a basketball team because after all, I, too, fell for the notion that the Eastern Conference was the JV league of the NBA. But no matter how double-faced this article may be, after their win in Game 1 it only became apparent to me that the resolve of this team is iron-clad, that their casually talked-about defense actually makes the other team turn over the ball more. And today, basketball, as a sport, has never meant more to itself because the Pistons did the great James Naismith proud. In front of the whole world, these athletes exemplified how to play basketball. And their success came as no secret.

Defend the paint. Make your shots and just play ball.

Mind-boggling as how everything turned out to be, the spirit of the team was echoed in a simple comment that will be lost in the flood of interviews and championship jubilation:

"You've got to know that you're going to be in a fight for 40 minutes. You've just got to be willing to take some blows and just stand in there and play" -Ben Wallace

Indeed, the Los Angeles Lakers had a self-proclaimed superman on their side. But even Superman had friends. This Lakers team didn’t. The Detroit Pistons showed that anything is possible as long as you have the will to accomplish it. Moreover, they also taught us that it didn’t hurt to rely on each other when the hour of proving comes. The better team won this year. Next year will be no different.

I love this game.

by Zeus A. Martinez