Warspite wrote:Manocad wrote:Warspite wrote:IMHO the 1987 Pistons were better than any of the Championship teams.
I'm assuming this means the 86-87 team and not the 87-88 team?
If so I'd be curious as to what your reasoning is. For starters, they didn't make the finals. And the 87-88, 88-89 and 89-90 teams were better in almost all the measured metrics.
The 87 team had a prime Adrian Dantley, a healthier Isiah, Mahorn and a younger Laimbeer, Vinnie. They had the Celtics down twice in that series. The same Celtics team that was a mere 9 months from being crowned the GOAT team. They lost in 7 games and most likely shouldnt have been taken to 7 games by the 1 year removed GOAT team. Its my contention that the 87 Celtics would beat any playoff team the Pistons faced in 89 or 90.
The 89 and 90 much like 04 team were slightly above .500 before they made huge moves (Aguirre, Sheed trade and Rodman starting) and went on huge end of season runs. The 87 team was consistently great. The only player that is better in 89,90 than 87 on offense is Dumars while Rodman is the only player improved on defense.
Why don't the moves the team made during the season count toward how good the team was? Aren't those moves part of the game? Isiah played 81, 81, 80 and 81 games in the 1986-1990 seasons. It wasn't until 1990-91 that he was injured. And while his peak PPG in those four seasons was indeed 20.6 in 1986-87, his lowest PPG was still 18.4 in 1989-90. That's one bucket.
Rodman went from 6.5/4.3 to 11.6/8.7. Salley went from 5.3/3.6 to 8.5/4.9. The fact that Isiah threw that inbound pass away is part of the game. You can't the play the "Well, if that hadn't happened..." game. It's not like the phantom foul on Laimbeer in '88; Isiah screwed up which probably cost them the series and a trip to the finals. Sure, it's only one play. But that single bad play still defines the team.
In the grand scheme I'd put both the 1988-89 and 2003-04 teams against anyone but those crazy good Bulls teams and expect them to do really well. The 1988-89 team because not only were they stacked and playing that rough and tumble defense that drove the opponents nuts, but that was a team of destiny. That team had as much fire and intensity of any Detroit team I've ever seen. The 2003-04 team was a defensive juggernaut. That streak of holding opponents below 70 points a game--70 POINTS A GAME--was absolutely nuts. And it wasn't a beat them up Bad Boys defense; it was a defense that works in any era.