ORLANDO – The Detroit Pistons are no longer just playing for the right to advance to the second round. They’re playing to avoid embarrassment.
Oh, they’ll tell themselves to focus on the game at hand and not worry about the ignominy they’ll face if they lose their first-round series to the Orlando Magic. One game at a time and all that, right?
Yet, they know. What’s already percolating, the chatter about their season, how they’ll be remembered, that no one will ever forget.
Come back and beat the Magic and one of the all-time two-year turnarounds goes into the books without an asterisk. Fail to dig out? That’s all anyone will remember – ever, never mind the ascension from 14 wins to 60.
Even all these years later – 32 of em’, in fact – basketball fans of a certain age still remember the first time it happened, when an 8-seed took down a mighty 1-seed in the NBA playoffs.
History worms its way into the memory banks in moments like that. Whether it’s pain or joy, no one ever forgets.
As for the first time an 8-seed toppled a 1?
I had to look up the year, forgive me. I did not have to look up the teams or their stars or the circumstances. Just as few around southeastern Michigan won’t have to look up the specifics of this potential debacle if the Pistons follow through with this collapse.
And yeah, it’ll be remembered as a collapse.
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Down the road, no one will think about the Magic’s injuries, or the near mutiny in the locker room, or the time it took their offseason additions to blend with their returnees – mostly because of injuries. Or that they were a bad matchup for the Pistons.
History is unforgiving like that.
The first top dog to get upset by an 8-seed happened in 1994, when the Denver Nuggets took down the Seattle SuperSonics. As I mentioned, I looked it up; I did not have to look up the teams or their stars or, of course, the lasting image from that shocking upset:
Dikembe Mutombo lying on his back – on the court – holding the basketball aloft, screaming for joy.
A team game forged by individual legacies
Seattle won 63 games that season, led by ascendent All-Stars and All-NBA team members Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton. It didn’t matter. Just as it hasn’t mattered that the Pistons won 60 games this season behind ascendent All-Stars (and potential All-NBA team members) Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren.
The SuperSonics got to the NBA Finals two years later and gave the 73-win Chicago Bulls a six-game series. That has helped the memories of that franchise era … to a point.
But Seattle fans will never forget the ’94 season. They had the best record (no one else even won 59 games) and the most dynamic duo, and Michael Jordan was playing baseball.
The Pistons do not have the best record this season. Nor do they have the best collection of talent. They do, however, have the best player in their series against Orlando (45-37), and that’ll be held against Cunningham if he can’t lead his team back from its 2-1 deficit.
This is how legacies work in the NBA, especially for stars. Not only is every playoff series – and every playoff game – litigated, but often every fourth quarter. For the best players, team failure hangs heavy on the individual.
Jump on NBA Twitter … excuse me, “X” … and watch in real time as LeBron James’ place in history as the would-be GOAT gets debated between every timeout, it seems. Mostly by Jordan fans, but also by Magic Johnson fans and Larry Bird fans and Stephen Curry fans.
It’s nonstop and exhausting but also addicting for so many. No sport elicits such digital stockpiling of ammunition, such trolling, such acrimony about who fits where into the club of all-timers. The discussions get hotter this time of year.
If Cunningham loses this series, he’ll be etched onto the dark side of pantheon chatter until the end of time, or until he wins a title, like Dirk. That would be as in Nowitzki, the Dallas Mavericks’ game-changing 7-footer who was the best player on a team that won 67 games, seventh-most in NBA history … and lost to 8-seed Golden State (42-40).
The “We Believe” Warriors, as they were known, are known, and still get giddily talked about in the Bay Area despite the franchise’s four championships that dot the timeline between that 2007 upset victory and now. Oh, and despite the presence of one of the game’s most iconic players ever in Curry (who wouldn’t arrive in Oakland for another 2½ years).
Folks out that way still love to crow about that takedown of the Mavericks. The stunning upset – Golden State’s first series victory in 16 years – dogged Dallas for years, but no one more than Nowitzki, at least until he led the Mavericks to the NBA title in 2011, upsetting the “Heatles” version of the Miami Heat, led by James.
Cade Cunningham is key
Hey, I don’t make the rules. Nor do I like ’em, because they sell a cheap version of a beautiful game, a team game, and undermine decades of great players and role players who helped propel “superstar” players to NBA titles. (Hi there, Scottie Pippen.)
And yet the force of a singular talent in the NBA is also undeniable, as Cunningham showed in Game 3 when he finally got serious, took his head out of the clouds, started to lock in and stopped turning the ball over.
He played defense. He got to the rim. He hit a 3-pointer to tie it with a couple minutes left that led to an Orlando timeout and a jumping, joyous shoulder bump with coach J.B. Bickerstaff.
He did all that … then couldn’t finish. That’s the narrative, and the truth, narrow though the view is.
Do the Magic have as much talent as the Pistons? Maybe even a smidge more? Yes, they do. And the 2007 Warriors, led by Stephen Jackson and Baron Davis and Jason Richardson were a terrible matchup for Nowitzki’s Mavericks.
No one remembers that, though. Nor do most remember the circumstances that led to the other five times an 8-seed knocked off a 1. Just as the basketball world won’t remember Franz Wagner missing 48 games this season to ruin Orlando’s chance at a much higher seed.
Doesn’t matter. Won’t matter. And if we stay within the unwritten rules of NBA legacies − shouldn’t matter.
The Pistons are supposed to win. Which means they have to win Game 4 to give themselves a reasonable chance to avoid being on the wrong side of NBA history.
More than advancing to the second round is at stake.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Pistons on verge of disgracing NBA legacy if they lose to Magic
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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