The NBA sidekick Hall of Fame

Tayshaun Prince

The 2004 Detroit Pistons may be the most underrated title team this century. Part of that may be because they lacked the star power of other title teams. They were not led by an MVP candidate. Their efforts did not orbit the legacy of a single player. They played very much as a unit. They played hard-nosed defense, and they were the antithesis of the Shaq and Kobe team they stunned in the NBA Finals.

The backbone of the team was its inside presence. Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace complemented each other greatly. Big Ben was the strongest player in the league. He was an anvil. Hammers changed shapes clanging against him in the post. Sheed could do anything and probably should’ve been a player with more of a polished resume and less of a cult following. Then again, he wouldn’t have been Sheed.

Chauncey Billups was the general. Rip Hamilton the endless motor and soft touch. Tayshaun Prince drew the toughest assignments, having to chase the likes of Reggie Miller and hound the likes of Kobe Bryant on a nightly basis.

In the championship year, Tayshaun was the team’s fourth-leading scorer, averaging 10.3 points per game. The number is not impressive, but no one on the team averaged even 18 points a game. The next year, when the Pistons lost to the San Antonio Spurs and finished just short of a repeat, he was the team’s third-leading scorer, having upped his average to 14.7. He would go on to have possibly his best postseason in 2006, but the Pistons would lose to the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals, as they would in the 2007 and 2008 postseasons to the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics.

Scoring numbers are perhaps not the best method for judging value on a team such as this, and maybe that could be said for any team. The results of a game, after all, are a constellation of statistics and what, at times, cannot be measured. In both seasons where this particular group of Pistons reached the NBA Finals, Prince ranked third in VORP both seasons. Both years he ranked behind Ben Wallace and Chauncey Billups, and both years he ranked ahead of Richard Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace.

If none of that is convincing, then let’s maneuver the fog and haze of myth. Prince, who attended the University of Kentucky and always bore an estranged resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, would eventually end up in Memphis as part of the 2013 Rudy Gay trade. From there, none of his stays would last very long. He would crisscross the eastern United States like some Washington Irving sprite, but there would always be that legendary chase-down block that helped spark a Bad Boy renaissance and decapitated an Indiana Pacer.