Goodbye, Detriot Dream!

It used to be there were only a couple ways to win an NBA championship.

Way back when, before this LeBron character came on the scene there were really only two types of teams you could build, if wanted to contend.

The first type of team was tried and true: call it the Two Superstar Model. It involved signing or trading for two (three if you were really lucky) elite scorers and building around them as best you can with one-dimensional, complimentary players.

This is the prototype that brought titles to Miami, San Antonio, and Boston, and resulted in a three-peat in LA. It was consistently dominant, if not exciting.

The second type of team was more distinctive, idiosyncratic even, but all the more tantalizing for its rarity.

When the 2003-2004 Detriot Pistons raised the Larry O’Brien trophy as the world’s greatest basketball team, they raised a few eyebrows along with it. Not only did they lack the requisite two elite scorers, they didn’t really have even one.

Instead they won with defense, with chemistry, and with balance. They moved the ball and feed off each other’s energy. They played smart and tough, and they didn’t really have to share the spotlight, because there wasn’t much spotlight on them to begin with.

You could make the argument that 2004 was the strangest NBA season we’ve had in recent memory and the Pistons couldn’t have done it any other year, and you’d probably be right. But they still won a championship. An NBA title is never a fluke; the play-offs are too long, the format too exhaustive. The Pistons won four consecutive seven-game series and came up in the clutch every time the money was on the table. In the process, they created a new blueprint for success in professional basketball that, for a moment, made the game a little more exciting.

Just five years later, we forget how remarkable Detriot was that year. The most prominent member of that team – and the only all-star – was an undrafted, 6-9 center who had been acquired basically as a throw-away player in a sign and trade with Grant Hill. Ben Wallace averaged a devastatingly-ordinary 9.5 points per game that season, and subsequent seasons have demonstrated that this was just about his offensive ceiling.

The scoring came by unorthodox ensemble: Rip Hamilton (17.6) was the fanatically restless shooting guard, who earned his buckets not from high-flying penetration but by being more active off the ball than anyone in the league. Tayshaun Prince (10.3) was the lock-down perimeter defender and occasional three-point specialist. Mehmet Okur (9.6) was the spark coming off the bench, creating match-up problems with his size and shooting touch. And Rasheed was Rasheed (13.7), raining corner threes, protecting the paint on defense, and bringing a locker room swagger to a team that nobody believed could win the title.

The only player likely to remembered as special in any kind of historical sense is Chauncey Billups, who along with Jason Kidd, redefined the point guard position with a dangerous combination of size, physicality, and intelligence. But despite his continued dominance at the position - witness last week's round 1 evisceration of Chris Paul - Chauncey isn't exactly a superstar. He's the kind of guy you'll tell your grandkids about - not the kind of guy that they'll know about on their own.

When the Pistons knocked out the LA in the famous "five game sweep", they defeated a team with four undisputed hall of famers. The Laker organization considered their playoff loss to San Antonio the previous year as some kind of fluke, and had assembled that 04 squad to dominate by sheer, overwhelming superstar power.

Instead, they were dismantled by a bunch of guys that casual fans had never heard of.

America celebrated, Kobe complained, Phil Jackson quit, and a new kind of dynasty seemed possible.

Unfortunately, the Pistons were never quite able to replicate that initial triumph. They made it to four more Conference Champions, but never got another title. Then came the Iverson trade, swapping the team's most indispensable component for a guy who couldn't even finish the season.

This year, the Pistons were unceremoniously swept in the first round by Lebron and company, and frankly looked terrible.

So where do the Pistons go from here? With the cap money likely to come off their books thanks to Allen Iverson, the prevailing opinion is that Joe Dumars will go after a mega-star or two in the summer of 2010. If he succeeds, Detroit could be back at the top of the Eastern Conference hunt in no time.

But everyone knows it won’t be the same. The Cinderella Champs, the Pistons that took it all the way with nothing but hard-nosed defense, quirky chemistry, and unselfish balance are officially done.

Is there anybody out there to fill their shoes? Portland and Denver are both built around intriguing mixes, but does anybody think they're true contenders at this point?

Interestingly, the team that once looked like a possible successor to the Detriot model, the Utah Jazz, just finished getting shellacked in the first round almost as badly as Pistons did. Two years ago, Utah looked like a fascinating combination of several multi-dimensional talents on the verge of making a huge leap.

Now, they look like a mismatched web of overlapping, flawed individualists who all hate each other.

Ironically, the only team that seems poised to win one or more titles over the next few years without the luxury of two superstars will do it with less, rather than more, balance. If the collective talents of 2004 Pistons were rare, the individual talents of Lebron James are even rarer.

But before The King takes his crown, before the long reign begins, we ought to take a moment and remember Detroit and the dream of the Superstar-Less Dynasty. Like a lot of dreams, it was short-lived and perhaps a little silly.

But it sure was to fun, for a few years, to keep the dream alive.