Blue Collar Blueprint

Ordinary Moments

We were in Denver in early March. The Pistons were practicing at a field house on the campus of the University of Denver before flying to Seattle. There was a side gym and I was leaning up against the bleachers talking with our TV producer Stan Fracker. At one point, I looked over to the practice session a hundred feet away on the far court and was struck by the classic ordinariness of the scene: Players standing at ease listening to their coaches and then jogging through plays as the coaches positioned them and explained things. I said to Stan, “If a stranger walked in, I could point over there and say, ‘by the way, those guys in the wrinkled practice shorts and randomly colored practice jerseys – see them over there -- that’s the best basketball team in the world.” The guy would have said, “Right, and I’m the pope.”

The point is, that without 20,000 people on hand and the trappings of the world’s great arenas; without the famous and familiar red, white and blue uniforms, this could have been any team from anywhere, USA. The Pistons were simply practicing and refining their craft, implementing the wishes of their coaches, just as they’d been doing since they were little kids. Take away the plush surroundings and the hype and excitement of the “show” –  strip it to its bare basics, and you have a bunch of guys playing ball, just as they’ve done their entire lives.

Where are we and when does the bus leave?

I was lying in bed late Wednesday night making some notes for this blog when I looked up from my pad and did a double take. I had my Toronto hotel room in mind’s eye and it took me a second to remember that I wasn’t there anymore. This was New York and that other room was yesterday.

Life on the road is a world unto itself.

The Pistons do everything in their power to give the players and the rest of us in the traveling crew the best of the best, and that’s why nobody complains. Things run like clockwork and many of the thorny logistics of travel are eliminated for us. But when you arrive in a city a 2 am after a long day and a game that night, it can be disorienting. We all wonder what travel must have been like years ago, when teams flew commercial, stayed in mid-range hotels and had to share rooms.

We took five bus rides in Toronto yesterday. True story. Back and forth to the Air Canada center for practice in the morning. Then it was back to the arena for the game and then back on the bus to go to the airport. We had to stop at US Customs in Buffalo – that blew an hour and a half -- and then after we landed in Jersey, we took the fifth and final bus ride to the hotel in New York City.

It was a nice win over the Raptors to start the road trip. The players were all pleased to see Mike James and congratulate him. James was on the title team in 2004, but like many reserve players, it’s hard to stick with a champion. James finally came into his own this year in Toronto, his 6^th NBA team in five years after kicking around in Europe and the CBA. His is a classic tale of passion and determination. When team after team gave up on him, he never wavered in his self-belief. He’s also better off where he is. Chauncey Billups makes every point guard an automatic second stringer and James wouldn’t have been able to emerge here.

New York is always a fascination and the Pistons loss there was unexpected. Rasheed and Rip got tossed in the third period, letting the emotions of inconsistent officiating get the better of them. Everyone knows how tough it is to officiate an NBA game with all the contact and fast paced action. You get a bad call in the heat of the action and lose your composure.

Flip Saunders told me that Raheed and Rip need to play with a little edge. But you can’t step over that edge. Over 82 games, everything will happen at least once, and on this night, two guys got tossed.

The Knicks were emotional that night. The Larry Brown / Stephon Marbury dispute was spilling over in a very public and ugly way and the Knicks played very hard in an effort to take attention away from it. They wore green uniforms in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day and utilized the motivation of playing the NBA’s best team to their advantage.

The Pistons haven’t played as well as they can for about a month or so, but in a strange way, I think that’s a good thing. Flip keeps saying that the key is to be playing your best after 82 games, and no team can be expected to play like the Pistons did the first half season when they went 36-5. Although they are in a virtual tie now, The Pistons will crank it back up and edge Dallas for the best record. The key is that the Pistons have 11 home games left to the Mavs seven. Can’t wait for them to come here March 28.

We flew to Charlotte Friday night after the Knick loss and beat the Bobcats Saturday night. Again, the Pistons played poorly but still pulled it out in the end to finish the trip 2-1.

David Thompson was at the Bobcats game and that was a trip down memory lane for some of us. In April, 1978, in the last game ever played at Cobo Arena, Thompson scored 73 points before a sparse crowd. He was battling George Gervin for the scoring title and Gervin got 63 in his final game to edge Thompson 27.21 to 27.15 points per game. I was a radio reporter on WJZZ-FM, George Blaha broadcast the game on WPON in Pontiac because WJR carried a Tigers game instead, and our director, Pete Skorich was a ballboy.

Thompson did an interview with me in the 4^th quarter and remembered every detail of the game. He would have been an all-time great but succumbed to cocaine addiction. He’s written a book, “Skywalker” about his life and recovery and is also a motivational speaker.

"Psyched" to be Home

I'm writing this flying back on Roundball One, reflecting on a week-long trip with America's most celebrated sports road show. For reasons I can't explain, time feels so extended on the road. One day feels like three and a week feels like month. Although it's a privilege to travel with the world's best basketball team, we're all ready to get back to our own beds and our families. I can’t even wait to walk the dog again.   

I last wrote to you on Tuesday from Cleveland after the Pistons swept back-to-back games with the Cavaliers. We arrived in Denver later that day and I soon realized that Western Conference teams view the Pistons differently. Whereas Cleveland sees the Pistons as a direct rival and an ongoing roadblock to their success, western opponents look at the Pistons moreso as a celebrated guest. On Wednesday, a columnist in the Denver Post asked fans to give Chauncey Billups a standing ovation that night for all the good deeds the Denver native has performed in his hometown.

Before the game that night, Nuggets coach George Karl said, "They're a basketball team, not an ESPN team," in praise of the Pistons pure and ego less approach to the game.

You just don't feel love for the Pistons like that over in the east.

Friday in Seattle, coach Bob Hill said, "They've gotta be one of the ten best teams ever, don't they?" And in LA on Saturday, the headline in the LA Times read, "Team Come True," lauding the Pistons as a group of oft-traded and released players who found commonality and success in Joe Dumars grand scheme.

A recurring theme in each of these cities was deep concern about how the season would play out for the home team. Cleveland was worried about another free fall that cost them the playoffs on the last day last year.

Denver had come off a humiliating home court blowout loss to Milwaukee. Kenyon Martin said, "If we play like that against the Pistons, we'll lose by 50." The Nuggets then played their best game of the season and held off the Pistons down the stretch. It was a tremendously entertaining game with the Nuggets making nine alley-oop dunks and catching the Pistons surprisingly flat-footed.

Karl is a veteran coach capable of great insight and perspective after his decades in the game. He had said before the game that each NBA team has a particular "psyche" that can rapidly and unpredictably change. His team's "psyche" was that they'd been playing well on the road and stinking it up at home. Sure enough, that all changed over the next three hours as the Nuggets played like killers against the best team in the league just two nights after getting booed off the same court.

Karl's description of his teams "psyche" prompted me to reflect back to Cleveland and realize that the Cavs had been in the throes of an inferiority "psyche."  Were they good enough and tough enough to back up the cocky attitude they showed when they beat the Pistons on New Year's Eve? They didn't stand the test.

Seattle had a different "psyche." They'd just shorn so-called bad apples named Potapenko, Evans and Radmanovic who were considered detrimental to the team esprit de corps, and acquired Chris Wilcox and Earl Watson. Both played well as new arrivals, and along with team leaders Ray Allen and Luke Ridenour, the Sonics put on a spirited performance punctured only by Rip Hamilton's last second winning basket.

Then there was the Lakers "psyche" Saturday night. Earlier in the week, after an ugly loss to the worst in the west Trailblazers, Phil Jackson described his team by saying, "They stink." Smush Parker said, "Our problem is team chemistry and I don't know how to change it." They changed it with an 18-0 run late in the third quarter and into the fourth, as the Lakers beat the now extremely road weary Pistons by 11.