I spent a lot of time tonight going back through the 80s Pistons, trying to get a grip on what I think went on. Right now I'm working with the hypothesis that there were 3 men that stood to the forefront for that team: Isiah Thomas was the offensive key, Dennis Rodman was the defensive key, and Chuck Daly was the mastermind. Dumars, Laimbeer, Microwave, Salley, Tripucka, Dantley, Aguirre, Mahorn, etc. all played their parts and played them well, but it seems to me that Zeke and Rodman are the two that stood out based upon how their arrivals on the scene and their eventual departures (or declines) changed their units for the better or worse.
Sticking with Zeke, the 1981 Pistons were 21 - 61 with an O-Rtg of 98.1. In 1982 Zeke and Kelly Tripucka came on the scene (and a year later Laimbeer came aboard), and for the next 2 years the team jumped to an average record 38 - 44 with all of the improvement coming on offense (O-Rtg average of 105.6, +7.5 from '81. The 2-year D-Rtg actually got 2 points worse from '81).
Then in 1984 Chuck Daly came in the coach. The team record immediately jumped up to 49 - 33, again with all of the improvement coming on offense (O-Rtg up to 111.5, 1st in NBA, while D-Rtg slipped to 108.1, 16th in league). Zeke, Tripucka and Laimbeer were still the main offensive cogs. Over the 7 years from 1984 thru 1990 the Pistons O-Rtg would never vary outside of the range of 109 to 111.4 pts/100 possessions. This is important, because almost all of the moving parts would change over this period...except for Zeke and Daily.
During Zeke's tenure from 1982 - 1986, the defense was pretty consistently around average in the league. After Daly came aboard, with Zeke running the ship, the Pistons averaged more than 47 wins per year from '84 - '86 with a strong offense (average O-Rtg 110, avg rank 5.7/23 teams) and a slightly below average defense (avg. D-Rtg 107.7, rank 13.3/23 teams). Dumars and Rick Mahorn joined the squad in 1986.
Then in 1987 the Pistons added two young guys to their big man rotation: Dennis Rodman and John Salley. They teamed up with Laimbeer and Mahorn to form a nasty defensive frontline, and the Bad Boys were born. Meanwhile, Tripucka got replaced as the frontcourt scorer by Adrian Dantley in '87, and 2 years later Dantley became Mark Aguirre. But the offense never really changed. For the next 4 years the offense stayed the same (avg O-Rtg 110.1, avg rank 8.5/24 teams) but the defense got stingy (avg D-Rtg 104.8, rank 3rd/24 teams). Rodman grew from a role player in '87 to their co-leading rebounder in '88 an '89 to the Defensive Player of the Year in '90 and '91).
Built on the consistently strong Isiah-led offense and the now dominant Rodman-led defense, the Pistons won 2 titles ('89 and '90) after coming bad-luck short of 2 more possible titles in '87 and '88. Then, in 1991, things started going down hill.
First, in '91, Isiah missed a lot of the season injured. Those that do the yearly in/outs point out that the Pistons didn't tank without Isiah, and this is useful to know. On the other hand, with Zeke playing roughly 3000 minutes per season the Pistons had been rock-solid around their average 110 O-Rtg for 7 years. I don't think it's coincidence that this season, with Zeke hobbling to only 1600 minutes and some change, they turned in their lowest mark since '83 (108.2 ORtg). That wasn't so steep of a decline on offense, but it was enough to have a definite negative impact on the win-loss record. The Defense was still strong, with Rodman winning his second straight DPoY while leading a stingy unit, but the magic was gone and the team won only "50" games.
Even though he would come back and play all of the next year, Isiah was clearly in decline by this point. And the offense continued to decline with him, down to 107.5 ORtg the next year (team wins 48 games, largely due to the still strong defense). Daly left after '92, and in '93 the offense maintained at a 107.4 Rtg but the defense fell off with Rodman missing 20 games and the Pistons were below .500 (40 - 42). Then, in '94, Rodman was gone and Zeke was a shell of himself in the last year before he retired, and the team won only 20 games.
Conclusions: So, all of that says what? To me, it illustrates that Zeke was the offensive "man" for those Pistons. His leading frontcourt scorer could swap out from Tripucka to Dantley to Aguirre with no discernible change in the team offense. The offense was the same from before Dumars to early less prominent Dumars to Finals MVP Dumars. The moving parts didn't matter, as long as Zeke was the one running the show. It wasn't until Zeke started missing games and slowing down due to injury/age that the offense started to slide. We don't have any good +/- data for the period, and we don't even have any in/out data until Zeke's last years. But after looking at the whole, I'm satisfied that he was having a consistent and large offensive impact for those Pistons teams. That essentially, he was their offensive anchor. He wasn't the leader of that dominant defense...that honor belongs to the defensive front line, eventually led by Rodman, but the offense stayed consistently strong and was still a vital (perhaps the limiting) cog in their titles. I'm satisfied with Zeke, here.
And frankly, especially after that ridiculously in-depth Rodman site that DocMJ linked a few threads back (
http://skepticalsports.com/?p=1214 ) and now really taking a closer look at those Pistons, and then subsequently Rodman's path through the Spurs and Bulls, I'm extremely tempted to nominate the Worm right now. I'm going to leave my nomination as TMac for now, as I nominated him last thread and he seems to have some traction right now, but Rodman needs to have his case made soon and I very well could still change my mind.
I also note the Dominique nomination, and I had actually forgotten about him when I did my official nominations last thread, but he's another that's extremely in the mix for me. Along with Mourning and a bunch of 70s big men. But for now, I'll leave it as TMac.
Vote: Isiah Thomas
Nominate: Tracy McGrady
