The Goin’ to Work Pistons just got together last month for a 20th anniversary celebration of their 2004 NBA title, but Chauncey Billups has given them another reason to gather again. Mr. Big Shot is about to join Ben Wallace as members of basketball’s most exclusive club, the Naismith Hall of Fame.
Billups and Vince Carter headline the 2024 class and the news comes on the heels of the reunion to toast the team considered the most unique champion perhaps ever for its lack of a clear No. 1 star among them. Billups was asked that day about Larry Brown’s forceful argument against any suggestion those Pistons lacked a superstar, something that virtually every other NBA champion of any era indisputably possessed.
“We didn’t have superstars,” Billups said. “I would agree with that. We had All-Stars. But superstars are different.”
There’s no litmus test for what makes a superstar, but the fact Billups didn’t consider himself or his teammates – who liked to describe themselves as five fingers of a clenched fist – as clearing that bar reveals a level of self-awareness that unlocked the collective power of their group.
Three of them – Billups, backcourt partner Rip Hamilton and final link Rasheed Wallace – were high lottery picks who brought superstar potential with them from college and endured their share of adversity elsewhere before coalescing in Detroit. Billups, drafted highest among them at No. 3 overall, traveled the rockiest road of them all. Traded as a rookie from Boston to Toronto, Billups also had stops in Orlando, Denver and Minnesota before signing a mid-level exception contract in free agency to come to the Pistons in the summer of 2002 ahead of his sixth NBA season as a 25-year-old.
There’s a lesson in there for Pistons fans who only know the finishing flourishes of the Goin’ to Work gang’s success story. All of the building blocks upon whose shoulders the next era of Pistons basketball rests – Cade Cunningham the lynchpin – are 22 or younger. Who knows how it would have played out if the Pistons had taken Billups, Hamilton and Wallace in successive drafts and let them sink or swim as a group?
And who knows how the rest of Billups’ career would have played out if he’d gone elsewhere that summer of 2002 as a free agent instead of coming to the Pistons, playing with the perfect backcourt complement to him in Hamilton and being admitted to the Larry Brown Graduate School of Point Guard Play? All of those things helped shape Billups, but the foremost reason Mr. Big Shot is getting sized for a bust in Springfield – the only reason whose value is indisputable – is that he refused to let failure define him or success go unpursued.
And in that there is a glaring lesson for all of the young Pistons enduring the disorienting experience of prolonged misery while playing a game in which they’ve overwhelmingly known only success before landing in the man’s world of the NBA.
The cycle of anointing AAU phenoms and then dismissing them for initial NBA flailing has only accelerated in the 25 years since the Goin’ to Work cast took the first steps of their professional careers. But the Celtics might have set a record for impatience that will never be broken when they cut bait on the No. 3 pick four months and 51 games after his debut.
No one would have dared to bet in the moment that in six years, Chauncey Billups would be recognized as one of the game’s top point guards, an NBA champion and about to start a streak of seven consecutive All-Star appearances. Now he joins an even more exclusive club, joining Ben Wallace, whose own story of perseverance – as an undrafted free agent – is a whole other testament to perseverance and the triumph of the human spirit.
When the Goin’ to Work Pistons gather in Springfield next fall to celebrate one of their own, they’ll add to their legacy as the most egalitarian NBA title winners that ever hoisted a flag. They’ll also stand as a shining example to their present-day successors of what’s possible when one refuses to accept failure as their fate.
PISTONS TRIVIA
Which Pistons opponent recorded the highest single-game point total against them in franchise history?
A: David Thompson
B: Elgin Baylor
C: Wilt Chamberlain
D: Michael Jordan
THE FABULOUS FLYNN
Malachi Flynn matched his season high of 17 points when the Pistons played at Atlanta last week – and he did that in the first half. Then he really got to work, scoring another 33 in the second half to smash his previous career high of 27 points, coming late in his rookie season when he was with Toronto. Since records have been kept of points scored off the bench, nobody has ever had more as a Pistons reserve. Rip Hamilton scored 38 on Feb. 7, 2009. Flynn’s was the ninth 50-point game in Pistons history and the most recent since Saddiq Bey scored 51 at Orlando on March 17, 2002. Flynn did it with great efficiency, too, hitting on 18 of 25 shots, 5 of 9 from the 3-point line and 9 of 12 free throws. Since records have been kept to specifically separate starters from bench players, Flynn is only the third in NBA history to score 50 without starting, joining Nick Anderson and Jamal Crawford.
THIS WEEK IN PISTONS HISTORY
On April 10, 1984, Bill Laimbeer hit a buzzer-beater to enable the Pistons to beat the Indiana Pacers 100-98 at the Pontiac Silverdome. One year later to the day – and against the same opponent – Laimbeer again hit a buzzer-beater to give the Pistons a 116-114 win over Indiana. In the 1984 win, Laimbeer put up 22 points and 22 rebounds as the Pistons improved to 47-32 in Chuck Daly’s first season as Pistons coach. Laimbeer’s 15-foot jump shot at the buzzer was the winner. Isiah Thomas recorded 16 assists on the 40 Pistons baskets that day as the Pistons overcame a 30-point outing from Indiana’s Butch Carter. On the one-year anniversary of that game, Laimbeer finished with 20 points and 13 rebounds and hit the game winner from nearly the same spot on the court. Thomas again had 16 assists to go with 16 points for the Pistons that day as they improved their record to 44-36. Laimbeer finished his career with four buzzer beaters, putting him among the leaders in NBA history.
THE WEEK AHEAD
- TUESDAY – The Pistons open the season’s final week by wrapping up a four-game road trip at Philadelphia, where the 76ers will be laser-focused on getting the win. After winning Sunday night at San Antonio in double overtime to stretch its winning streak to five games, Philadelphia starts the week with a 44-35 record and is in the No. 7 spot in the Eastern Conference playoff chase but with a chance to get into fifth or sixth and avoid the play-in tournament. Joel Embiid returned last week after being sidelined since early February with a knee injury. Philadelphia has won the first three meetings of the teams this season.
7 p.m. on BALLY SPORTS DETROIT and TV-20 DETROIT and WWJ-AM 950
- THURSDAY – The Pistons wrap up their home schedule the same way they began it way back on Oct. 28 when they beat the Chicago Bulls comfortably despite Zach LaVine’s 51-point night. The Pistons own a 2-1 edge in the series with Chicago this season. Chicago has clinched a berth in the play-in tournament, currently in the No. 9 spot and trying to hold off Atlanta for the right to host the 9-10 game. The Bulls were 20-23 when LaVine’s season ended in mid-January and with Sunday’s loss at Orlando they’ve gone 17-18 without him.
7 p.m. on BALLY SPORTS DETROIT PLUS and TV-20 DETROIT and WWJ-AM 950
- FRIDAY – The Pistons end their season with a two-game swing through Texas, opening against the Dallas Mavericks, who figure to land anywhere from the fourth seed in the Western Conference to seventh. Luka Doncic won’t quite average a triple-double, but he leads the NBA in scoring at 33.9 points per game while also registering 9.2 rebounds and 9.8 assists. Kyrie Irving averages 25.8 points and shoots 41 percent from the 3-point arc. Doncic and Irving combined for 85 points in Sunday’s overtime win over Houston to eliminate the Rockets from playoff contention.
8:30 p.m. on BALLY SPORTS DETROIT PLUS and TV-20 DETROIT and WWJ-AM 950
- SUNDAY – The Pistons end their season at San Antonio where the Spurs open the week bringing up the rear in the Western Conference with a 19-59 record despite the emergence of rookie Victor Wembanyama as the bona fide star the NBA anticipated he would be in the run-up to the 2023 NBA draft lottery won by San Antonio. Wembanyama averages 21.1 points and 10.6 rebounds while leading the NBA in blocked shots at 3.5 per game.
3:30 p.m. on BALLY SPORTS DETROIT and TV-20 DETROIT and WWJ-AM 950
TRIVIA ANSWER
David Thompson scored 73 points against the Pistons in the final game they played with Cobo Arena as their home court before moving to the Pontiac Silverdome. It came on April 9, 1978. The back story is that Thompson was waging a battle with George Gervin, who played high school basketball at Detroit Eastern and in college at Eastern Michigan, for the NBA scoring title that season. It was the closest race in NBA history and Gervin went into the game with 14 more points scored for the season than Thompson. The Pistons and Thompson’s Denver Nuggets played a matinee at Cobo with Gervin and San Antonio set to play that night. In his autobiographical “Skywalker,” Thompson recounted the drama. “Whether we won or lost, we were still headed for the playoffs. So (Nuggets coach Larry Brown) was willing to let me shoot to my heart’s content to win the NBA scoring title. If I put up astronomical numbers, then Gervin, playing in New Orleans that evening, would be chasing me.” Thompson was Michael Jordan before Michael Jordan, leading North Carolina State to the 1974 NCAA title when he averaged 26.0 points and carried the Wolfpack to a double-overtime win over Bill Walton and the UCLA dynasty at the Final Four. He was in his second NBA season when he dueled Gervin for the scoring title. On the final day of the season – before the 3-point shot was in effect – Thompson hit 28 of 38 shots and 17 of 20 free throws, playing 43 minutes. But that night, Gervin hit 23 of 49 shots and also 17 of 20 free throws, scoring 63 points to edge him out. “The truth of the matter was that I didn’t much care,” Thompson wrote. “I wasn’t ever about individual accomplishments. … So I told coach Brown that I just wanted to play and whatever happened was up to the fates.” Thompson’s average of 27.15 points per game moved him ahead of Gervin for a few hours, but Gervin’s 63-point outburst raised his average to 27.22 and gave him the crown.
(Eddie Rivero, Pistons basketball information specialist, contributed to this report.)