A Long Time Coming
A Long Time Coming.
My oh my we’ve been through quite a bit as Pistons fans. I really started getting into the team during the 02-03 season – I was 8 years old – and I joined the party just in time. I saw this team win a championship in 2004 and contend every single year after that through 2008. I got to watch the best starting 5 alive play during their primes for years as they represented everything about Detroit. The Goin’ To Work Pistons were everything a team should be. Play hard, play smart, play together.
November 4, 2008, was the beginning of a dark time for Pistons fans and I don’t think we truly knew how long and strenuous it was going to be. Our leader, our finals MVP, our Mr. Big Shot was traded for an aging superstar on an expiring contract with hopes of a young, promising Rodney Stuckey turning into our new star. It’s safe to say that this move couldn’t have turned out any worse.
July 8, 2008 – December 22, 2014 could not have been more painful. With the new money created in the Billups deal, we signed Ben Gordon and Charlie Villenueva to bring in the new era of Pistons basketball. Once again, this move probably couldn’t have turned out any worse. And once this was all coming to an end, we signed Josh Smith to be our star. Ha. That’s all I’ll say about that.
Things starting looking up again when we hired the wizard, Stan Van Gundy, as our head coach and president of basketball operations. He then built a front office centered around GM Jeff Bower that has made great move after great move. In just over 2 years, we’ve gone from hopeless to “we’ve really got something special brewing around here”.
Only two players remain from the team that Stan Van Gundy inherited – Andre Drummond and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope – and the way he’s built around them has been genius. Getting Reggie Jackson, Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris for essentially nothing to round out the core. Drafting the incredibly promising Stanley Johnson, and signing Aron Baynes, Ish Smith, Jon Leuer & Boban Marjanović doesn’t hurt either.
Last season was the first season since we traded Chauncey that we made the playoffs. Last season was the first season since we traded Chauncey that we had a TEAM. We put up a fight in the most competitive sweep in recent memory against the eventual champion Cleveland Cavaliers. We developed a Detroit Vs. Everybody mentality, a Bad Boys mentality, a winning mentality.
We now have a young team that’s ready to take on any challenge thrown their way. We now have a talented team that’s ready to win games and get back into the playoffs after tasting it for the first time. We now have a team that resembles our beloved Bad Boys and Goin’ To Work Pistons. We now have a team.
It’s been a long time coming, but Detroit Basketball is back.
