When you think of the Pistons-Bulls rivalry, you immediately think of the four consecutive playoff showdowns from 1987-91. You think of Michael Jordan, the Bad Boys and the three NBA titles those teams captured after defeating the other.

But this great basketball rivalry began long before then. It started with a seven-game series featuring Hall of Famers at the peak of their careers and team milestones on both sides. It sounds like 1990, but it was a first-round series in the 1974 playoffs that started it all.

Since coming to Detroit in 1958, the Pistons had never tasted success like they did in the 1973-74 season. Center Bob Lanier was dominant, averaging 22.5 points and 13.3 rebounds and taking All-Star Game MVP honors. Fellow Hall of Famer Dave Bing earned All-NBA second team honors and averaged 18.8 points and 6.9 assists. In his first full season as head coach, Ray Scott guided the Pistons to a then-franchise-best 52-30 record.

That kind of success was nothing new for the Bulls, who averaged 52 wins between 1970-71 and 1974-75. Chicago’s 54 wins put them ahead of Detroit in the Midwest Division standings, but behind the powerhouse Milwaukee Bucks, built around a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Bulls coach Dick Motta was on the first stop of a coaching career that would span five teams and 1,952 games - the fourth most all-time. Perhaps it’s fitting that Motta’s Bulls had three future NBA coaches - Rick Adelman, current Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan and Bob Weiss. Point guard Norm Van Lier and small forward Chet Walker were All-Stars, and forward Bob Love led the Bulls in scoring with 21.8 points per game.

With only 18 NBA teams at that time, Detroit and Chicago met seven times in the regular season. The Pistons won two of three meetings at Cobo Arena but lost all four visits to Chicago - making the Pistons’ Game 1 victory at Chicago, 97-88, even more stunning. Lanier opened his monster postseason with 27 points. He averaged 26.3 points and 15.3 rebounds in the series.

In 1974, teams traded home court after each playoff game. The Bulls took Game 2 in Detroit and escaped Game 3 with an 84-83 win. The unheralded Stu Lantz scored 23 in Game 4 as the Pistons evened the series, 102-87.

The Bulls won Game 5, but Detroit won its final home game of the year, perhaps stirred by the pregame presentation of the NBA Coach of the Year Award to Scott in front of a raucous Cobo Arena crowd. Scott had doubled the team’s win total from just two years earlier, but would be fired only 1½ seasons later.

The Bulls also lost Sloan in Game 6. Sloan, who had been averaging 16.7 points and 10.3 rebounds, was out with a foot injury but his absence took nothing from the Game 7 drama in Chicago. Tied at 94, the Bulls’ All-Star, Walker, dropped a 10-footer with three seconds left to put the Bulls ahead. Bing’s inbounds pass was broken up and Chicago had its first-ever first playoff series victory. The Bucks swept them in the next round, the Western Conference Finals.

The next year, the Bulls won the Midwest Division while the Pistons slipped under .500 (40-42). The 1974-75 Pistons were desperate to clinch a playoff berth in their next-to-last game of the season, and they did by defeating Chicago at Cobo Arena, 97-89.

The 1974 Pistons-Bulls series marked the end of the greatest season in the Bing-Lanier era. It also was the Bulls’ last best chance to get past the Western Conference’s other dominant teams, Milwaukee and the Los Angeles Lakers. It would be more than a decade before the Pistons and Bulls were again major figures on the NBA scene.

Information was compiled from Four Decades of Motor City Memories by Steve Addy and Brett Ballantini‘s recap of the 1970s Chicago Bulls for www.bulls.com.