With Ben Wallace courtside, the Pistons put on a defensive performance worthy of the four-time Defensive Player of the Year and his Goin’ to Work teammates who flanked him, Larry Brown and Pistons owner Tom Gores on a night that shook down the echoes of The Palace’s best days.
The Pistons handed Golden State only its fourth loss of the season – the first with the Warriors at full strength – and limited the NBA’s top-ranked offense to 95 points and 36 percent shooting.
“Fitting, I guess. Fitting,” said rookie Stanley Johnson, who’d just turned 8 when Wallace battled Shaquille O’Neal to lead the Pistons to the 2004 NBA title over the Los Angeles Lakers in the “five-game sweep.” “Everybody is going to hype it like we did something crazy. We just played hard. Played hard, played smart, played together.”
That’s a pretty good formula, one Wallace and his pals surely could appreciate.
“Those guys accepted the challenge,” said Chauncey Billups, who gets his No. 1 retired alongside Wallace’s No. 3 next month. “It’s been fun watching them all year. They’re a fun team to watch.”
“I don’t know,” Stan Van Gundy said when asked if his team did Wallace proud, “but they did me proud. The third quarter, we weren’t great. But for the rest of the game, we played really hard and really well. Not much to complain about tonight.”
It was very nearly a wire-to-wire win over the Warriors, who took a gaudy 37-3 record into the game. The Pistons jumped to an 18-8 lead early, but Golden State finished the first quarter on a 22-9 run for a three-point lead. Then Van Gundy’s bench, led by Aron Baynes, opened the second quarter on a 17-3 run. Baynes hit 6 of 6 shots in nine first-half minutes, the Pistons led by 16 at halftime and Golden State never got closer than 10 points after that.
The bench again spurted to start the fourth quarter, a 9-0 run, and the Pistons saw their lead grow to 25 with seven minutes to play. You never exhale against a team that can score in bunches as the Warriors can, but Luke Walton called off the dogs with three minutes left, pulling Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green with the Pistons ahead by 19.
Curry, even though dogged by Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and challenged by him defensively, was magnificent, scoring 38 points, 23 in the second half. And Thompson added 24. But take those two out of the equation and the other Warriors shot a combined 13 of 50, 26 percent.
The Pistons put up some other Wallace-esque numbers: 11 blocked shots, getting them from six players, Andre Drummond leading with three; and eight steals, Caldwell-Pope leading with three. Drummond reeled in 21 rebounds as the Pistons held a 57-47 edge.
“That was for him,” Drummond said of Wallace. “I told him I was going to get 20 for him. He patted me on the back and said, ‘Good job. Do it every night.’ ”
Just as Wallace’s Pistons almost always got contributions up and down their lineup, so did they use that recipe to beat Golden State. Marcus Morris had 16 points, eight boards, six assists and two blocked shots. Ersan Ilyasova had 10 points, eight boards and another pair of blocks. Caldwell-Pope scored 20 points, 16 in the first half to force Walton to switch Thompson over to him instead of hounding Reggie Jackson, who added 20 points to go with eight assists and no turnovers.
Johnson showed his chops again off the bench with eight points, three assists and a spectacular block – very much a Ben Wallace block – of Harrison Barnes as he went hard to the rim. Baynes took a hard knee to the thigh while blocking Leandro Barbosa’s driving layup try, having to leave the game early in the fourth quarter. And when Brandon Jennings couldn’t go after halftime with a jammed ankle, Steve Blake – who hadn’t played since Dec. 26 save for mop-up minutes in the 25-point win over Orlando – turned in seven sparkling minutes, hitting two 3-pointers and picking up two rebounds and an assist.
With the win in hand and less than two minutes to play, Van Gundy walked to the end of the bench and gave Blake an exuberant fist clench.
“I held him up as an example to our young guys because he does all of his work and keeps himself ready,” Van Gundy said. “He had no idea coming in, doesn’t play the whole first half and then to come in and do that. That’s the kind of thing that makes your team and the kind of thing you need in our organization. Tremendous performance by a lot of guys.”
“It feels amazing,” Jackson said. “I was talking to Chauncey and Rip (Hamilton) and told them I don’t know how I would’ve said hi or even tried to approach them if we didn’t come out victorious, especially for Big Ben’s big night. It’s a special night. You never want to lose on your home court and especially not when the circumstances are like this.”
They put on a show for a sellout crowd of 21,584 … and, truth be told, there were probably a few hundred more than that, at least, making the place hum. The atmosphere reminded Ben Wallace and his teammates of what they helped create a decade-plus ago – and so did the scoreboard when it was over.
“Oooh, man, that was the most fun for me,” Billups said. “Seeing and hearing this building like I remember it in our years here. That’s what was the most fun. That’s what we talked about all night on the front row. Just the energy in the building – phenomenal.”
Phenomenal, indeed.