Go ahead. It’s OK. You can hate the Detroit Pistons again, just as the Bulls did in the late 1980s when they knew they were better, quicker, more athletic, certainly more classy and definitely less arrogant. A lot less arrogant. Way less arrogant.
The Bulls just couldn’t beat them on the basketball floor. And it became oh so frustrating as the Pistons smirked and ignored them. They knew the Bulls were coming. Just as this Pistons team must know the Bulls are coming for them as they pretend not to notice.
“Ain’t no heated rivalry,” Rasheed Wallace offered after the Pistons practiced Friday at Moody Bible Institute for Saturday night’s first meeting with former teammate Ben Wallace. “Not really. I don’t see them as a rival. They’ve never been to me since I’ve been here. Back in the day with Joe [Dumars] and [Scottie] Pippen and those guys.
“To me, our rivals in the East are Indiana and Miami. Not to take anything away from those young fellas, but it’s not a rivalry.”
Grrrrrrrrrrr.
It sure seemed like one last season when Rasheed Wallace spent much of an easy December victory mocking the Bulls and laughing at their misses, shouting “ball don’t lie” as the Bulls missed free throws, yelling “bank” on shots and pushing around Andres Nocioni. Coach Scott Skiles seethed and in a postgame lecture he assured his team he would have done something about it.
More Top Picks Roof Racks Car
In their next game later in December, the usually calm Othella Harrington got ejected in frustration. And when the teams met again in February, Skiles almost did something about it. Pistons players say Skiles was challenging Richard Hamilton to a fight after Hamilton got ejected for elbowing Kirk Hinrich.
Skiles denied it, though most people would have come to blows after the things Hamilton, according to witnesses, called Skiles: Unprintable names and characterizations that have led to much more extreme violence elsewhere.
“Part of the game, nothing more,” Hamilton said with a laugh Friday. “You find different ways to motivate yourself every night, to get excited and go out and play. You want to find what different advantages can win the game. There are so many different tactics you try to do on the floor. It’s all part of the game.
“It was a fun game and we walked away with the victory. That’s all that matters.”
Skiles was said to have bitten the head off a live chicken.
You can almost hear the Bulls players’ teeth gnashing, a sound once familiar to Pippen, Michael Jordan and the rest.
The Pistons have beaten the Bulls 12 straight times at the United Center. But the Bulls are near the top of the East this season, and with Ben Gordon and Luol Deng developing, they’re clearly on the rise. Injured Pistons All-Star point guard Chauncey Billups noticed the Bulls when they swept the Pistons in Detroit in the 2004-05 season as the Pistons were on their way to the Finals for a second straight season.
“That got our attention,” Billups said. “Because of that, we said last year, `We can’t mess around with this team.’ We came into those four games focused and determined and came out with wins.”
But now the landscape has changed some, even if the Pistons are loathe to admit it despite the Bulls’ addition of Ben Wallace.
Wallace against his former team is likely more of a footnote given that Pistons players probably talk to Wallace more often than Wallace’s new teammates do. Billups, who won’t play on Saturday, says he and Ben Wallace speak about every day, and Wallace will always be a Piston.
“They took away our horse and we miss him dearly,” Billups said. “But we’ve got four guys who are pretty much All-Stars in our lineup, so we’re going to be fine.
“I’m sure he’s always going to have his heart in Detroit no matter what. He created his legacy there. He’s got a chance to be in the Hall of Fame and it’s always going to be about what he did with the Pistons. He’s one of the biggest faces in the history of the franchise. It’s always going to be Ben Wallace and Detroit even though he’ll have great and successful years here.”
That may create some ambivalence for the Bulls on Saturday.
Everyone hates the Pistons and their behavior. The Bulls question their sportsmanship; they say the Pistons moan and constantly beg for fouls. The Bulls now have Ben Wallace, who was involved in sticking it to them.
But the Pistons remain the team that has been the Eastern dynasty the last five years.
So it’s probably a bigger game for the Bulls than for Ben Wallace, and perhaps not so much for the Pistons, who on Friday seemed eager for the reunion with their old friend.
“I’m pulling for Ben–he’s one of my best friends,” Billups said. “Our whole thing is we want to win, but not at all costs. Don’t burn out like last year (when they won 64 games and didn’t make the Finals). Don’t wear out everybody. Improve the bench.
“Our goal is to win a championship, not get the No. 1 seed. We’re a good road team, and to get to the Finals you’ve got to win on the road anyway. The point is to play your best ball at the end of the year, not the first three or four months.”
So this is just Act I.
“It should be fun going against an old teammate,” Rasheed Wallace said. “Cool.”
As for keeping their cool, the Bulls aren’t making any promises.
———-
More Top Picks Treadmill