Corbin Explains: The grimy allure of the Detroit Pistons

Every Pistons team that isn’t a stout, mean defensive unit is absolutely nothing. The Bad boys played hideous, dirty hoops, bleeding their opponents dry on one end while Isiah Thomas, an unsavory dude by pretty much any ethical measurement,  set everyone up and drove to the rim in lil’ tiny spaces.

The Wallace/Wallace squad was even more revolting, winning a title and making a Finals by systematically dismantling their opponents with weird specialty dudes who were just, entirely too committed to the cause of winning. The 2000’s Pistons were so disgusting, so grimy, so singularly focused on the job of making basketball hideous so their opponents would just throw their hands in the air and give up altogether, that the NBA, like, did everything they could to make sure the kind of basketball they played wouldn’t be successful for too long. If they were just a little better, they could have ruined the NBA! That’s beautiful, man.

If there was a D’Antoni-Style runnin’ team that played in Detroit, won 60 games, made a Conference Finals, I would reject them out of hand. No one wants that. No one! Detroit is for disgusting messes, teams that bloody their opponents.

Look, this fact is bad for Detroit in this era. We’re living in The Offense Age, a time when spread attacks and small lineups are destroying people, setting a precedent. No one plays sludge ball anymore, fills their glass with that thick defense porter and coats their opponents’ throat with its disgusting high ABV film. The last time it worked, really, was the middle of the last decade, when the Wallace Pistons and some particularly hideous manifestations of the Spurs bled out everyone who played them. Sure, the Grizz did some interesting work for a while, but they were never meant to find the source and snatch it from its podium and devour its power.

Not only do you NOT WANT to see a run-and-gun Pistons team, you SIMPLY WILL NOT. Their stars limit them. They were born in the blood age, and they are required to live a life as a bloody squad. Trying to stray out of their inevitability will only lead to failure.

AND YET, the age demands they do. A nightmare for a squad looking to succeed, but who, quite frankly, are not allowed to succeed in the manner the time demands from them.

There is, unfortunately, only one solution:

Wait.

Bop around, draft dudes, hire coaches and wait. Because this nonsense won’t last forever. Sooner or later, players will catch up to this spread pick-and-roll stuff. We will live in the halfcourt age when every wing closes out like a maniac, every guard works pressure, every defensive big man can take 3s and run fast and keep themselves on the court enough to do hideous work on the defensive end.

In the analytics age, I think that writers and thinkers and fans have lost right of something: that these things are always moving targets. Someday, someone will figure out the thing that breaks spread screen and roll, just like they broke the triangle, net rushing tennis players, small ball baseball, whatever. AND ON THAT DAY, the Pistons, belying their inherent spirit, the very purpose of their franchise, to play disgusting, grimy, unwatchable defensive basketball, will step up take the sword of hideousness, and bring it down on the league’s neck. Everything that happens in the interim is nonsense, appreciate it as such.