AUBURN HILLS – The Goin’ to Work Pistons were the most egalitarian NBA champion since the New York Knicks of Reed, Frazier, Monroe, Bradley and DeBusschere from two generations previous.
Rip Hamilton’s jersey gets run up to The Palace’s rafters at halftime when they host Boston on Sunday, but once Ben Wallace’s went up last season – followed the next month by Chauncey Billups’ – it seemed inevitable that they’d all be there someday, together, flying side by side like five laundered dress shirts from another work week drying on the line.
Hamilton becomes the third. In some ways, he was most taken for granted.
Billups was Mr. Big Shot, ran the offense, had the ball in his hands all the time, wore No. 1, was the unofficial team spokesman and had that incandescent smile.
Ben Wallace sported the billowing Afro and possessed a cult following, enormous biceps, outrageous rebounding numbers and all those Defensive Player of the Year trophies weighing down his mantle.
Tayshaun Prince was the quietest among them and the only one who didn’t get to the All-Star game when the other four went in 2006, but he also had the frozen-in-time blocked shot of Reggie Miller and a reputation – dating from his rookie season, when Rick Carlisle took him out of mothballs to be draped all over Tracy McGrady and turn a playoff series – as an elite perimeter defender for a team that hung its hat on D.
Rasheed Wallace was ever flamboyant and spectacularly gifted in so many areas, reluctant to let the spectrum of his abilities regularly breathe but held in reverence by NBA peers for the breadth of his game.
Rip was their metronome, giving them 18 to 20 points a night in an NBA era where points came grudgingly. Those six straight years the Goin’ to Work Pistons went to the Eastern Conference finals? Rip was their leading scorer in every season.
Even though it wasn’t all that long ago – but still, is it really 13 years since they won that title already? – it was a different NBA era. For 10 straight seasons, from his second year in Washington before Joe Dumars sent the much more acclaimed Jerry Stackhouse to the Wizards for the wiry, bouncy Hamilton, Rip averaged between 17.3 and 20.1 points.
Let’s view his scoring in the context of the era. When the Pistons beat Indiana in one of the most bitterly contested playoff series of that or any NBA era, the 2004 conference finals, they won the series despite averaging 75 points – 75! – a game. Only three times in the series did either team top 80 points. The Pistons won games scoring 72 and 69 points.
Rip averaged 23.7 points in the series on 47 percent shooting. To put that in perspective, that’s like averaging 33 points for a team that scores at today’s average of 105.5 points a game.
“Man, he was a hard, hard guy to defend,” Stan Van Gundy said, recalling the 2005 conference finals when his Miami Heat lost in seven games to the Pistons. “He was in a different era. He was a great catch-and-shoot, mid-range guy.”
Hamilton scored 22 points, hitting 11 of 16 shots, in that 88-82 Game 7 win. How important was he? Larry Brown didn’t trust anyone else with a minute of his time. Rip played all 48. Not anybody else on either team.
“It was Rip we couldn’t get under control,” Van Gundy said. “We tried a little bit of everything. He was coming off of Ben, we would stunt up and almost go into a trap. He’s just getting the ball to Ben, Ben’s making the next pass, then you lay back more and he’s shooting a jumper. Then you come off Chauncey on the stunt, he’s making that pass, Chauncey’s shooting a three. We couldn’t get that under control at all. The guy was a great, great player.”
His passing skills were underrated, too. He had seven assists that night.
Another thing: Hamilton had a reputation as the defensive weak link of a team that yielded a miserly 84.3 points a game in their title-winning season. But Van Gundy doesn’t remember it that way.
“He became a really solid, committed defender.”
Evidence: In March 2008, the Pistons beat Cleveland and LeBron James 85-71 at The Palace. Usually, it was Prince on James. That night, Rip guarded him. LeBron came in having scored 20-plus points in 49 straight games. Rip held him to 13 and it wasn’t because LeBron decided to be a facilitator that night. He shot 4 of 17 and picked up four assists with five turnovers. Rip probably gave away 75 pounds.
There were times in their latter seasons together where it was Hamilton defending the opposition point guard and Billups, strong enough to match up with shooting guards, switching over to allow the lanky, 6-foot-7 Hamilton to harass the other team’s primary ballhandler.
If you had to pick one possession to boil down a great player’s career, for me the one you pick with Rip would come the night of May 16, 2004. It was Game 6 at New Jersey, the second round of the playoffs, the Nets up 3-2 and desperate to close it out at home in a series where the home teams had been dominant through four games. The Pistons were coming off a crushing triple-overtime loss two nights earlier.
They fell behind 13-4 to start the game in a series where a nine-point deficit felt like 29. With less than 40 seconds to play and the Pistons up two with the ball, they needed a basket. They worked the shot clock methodically and ran the bread-and-butter staple of their offense – running Hamilton around endless screens to free him for his signature mid-range jumper. (Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time they ran “2-Chest,” I’d have a retirement plan.)
With the shot clock about to expire, Rip got the ball on the left baseline, pump faked Jason Kidd off his feet and drained a cold-blooded 18-footer.
It was perhaps the biggest shot of their playoff run that spring, a run that culminated in the “five-game sweep” over a Lakers roster heavy with future Hall of Famers. The Pistons might not end up with anyone from that team in Springfield, which would merely underscore their unique composition.
When you’re built the way the Goin’ to Work Pistons were put together, all five have to fill their roles as snugly as five fingers fit into a glove. Rip filled his role – their metronome, the guy whose scoring was at the heart of their offense – as unerringly as anyone who’s ever pulled a Pistons jersey over his head. That’s why it goes to the rafters, where it finds fitting and familiar company.