ben wallace

DETROIT, Mich.– The Detroit Pistons announced today that Ben Wallace will join the Pistons organization as a basketball operations and team engagement advisor.  In this role, Wallace will assist Troy Weaver and the basketball operations staff, Dwane Casey and the coaching staff and serve as a mentor and development asset for players on the Pistons roster and those joining the Motor City Cruise.  The former Pistons’ great will also engage on select organizational business initiatives and community efforts.

Ben is a Hall of Famer and a Pistons legend who has continued to come back home and support our team and our organization,” said team owner Tom Gores. “He embodies everything we are building here and will be a real asset to Dwane, Troy and the rest of our staff.  Ben helped set the standard for what it means to be a Piston and will be a tremendous influence for our young players.”

A September Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, Wallace played 1,088 career NBA games over 16 seasons with Washington, Orlando, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland.   He was acquired by Detroit from the Orlando Magic in 2000, spent nine seasons with the Pistons collecting NBA Defensive Player of the Year honors four times (2002, 2003, 2005, 2006) and was named an NBA All-Star four times (2003-06).  Undrafted out of Virginia Union, Wallace was an All-NBA Second Team selection three times (2003, 2004, 2006), All-NBA Third Team selection twice (2002 and 2005), an NBA All-Defensive First Team selection five times (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006), and an All-Defensive Second Team selection once (2007).  During his first stint with Detroit (2000-06), the Pistons made the playoffs in five of seven years, winning Eastern Conference Championships in 2004 and 2005 and the NBA Championship in 2004.  Wallace is the franchise’s all-time leader in regular-season and playoff blocks (1,486 and 215, respectively) and ranks first among Pistons’ all-time playoff leaders in rebounds (1,237).  He holds franchise single-game records for blocks in a game (10 – twice), defensive rebounds in a quarter (10) and blocks in a quarter (6).  In 655 games with the Pistons, Wallace averaged 6.6 points, 11.1 rebounds, 2.3 blocks, 1.4 steals and 1.5 assists in 32.6 minutes per game. 

Wallace, a native of White Hall, AL, recorded 10,482 rebounds during his career, becoming one of only 40 players, and the only undrafted player (Moses Malone was drafted in the 1974 American Basketball Association Draft by the Portland Trail Blazers in the ABA Dispersal Draft in 1976) in NBA history to record 10,000 rebounds. He is also one of only 11 players in NBA history to record 10,000 rebounds and 2,000 blocks and is the shortest player at 6’9 to record 2,000 career blocks.  Overall, Wallace averaged 5.7 points, 9.6 rebounds, 2.0 blocks, 1.3 steals and 1.3 assists in 29.5 minutes per game.  His No. 3 jersey was retired by the Pistons in 2016.

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Ben Wallace To Join Pistons As Basketball Operations and Team Engagement Advisor

Pistons fans weren’t the only ones to get flashbacks of Ben Wallace while watching Isaiah Stewart barge through his rookie season with a furrowed brow and set jaw. They weren’t even the first. Troy Weaver saw those traits in Stewart on the scouting trail even before he landed at Washington for his one and only college season.

And now Weaver and Dwane Casey are ensuring Stewart is given every tool necessary to continue down the path Wallace navigated with Hall of Fame force and determination during his time as the anchor of the 2004 NBA championship Pistons – by having Wallace serve as tutor to Stewart.

“Ben is going to be with us this week in training camp working with our big guys,” Casey said minutes after the first practice of camp had wrapped up with Wallace and Stewart standing side by side, protégé peppering mentor with questions. “Post defense, showing them the tricks of the trade. Just to have Ben around and have an example for Isaiah and Luka (Garza) and Kelly (Olynyk) is so important. For what he’s done and what he means to this franchise, really excited about having Ben as part of our organization.”

Casey hinted at more to come, too, saying Wallace would be around this season, scouting and filling other roles, perhaps. Bottom line, the 20-year-old Stewart – who comes about as close as anyone has to matching the almost cartoonishly muscular physique Wallace developed – is going to have an ideal sounding board at hand at a critical point of his evolution.

“Today was probably the most I ever talked to him,” Stewart said. “I took advantage of the time and asked as many questions as I can. Hearing he’s going to be around more, I’m definitely going to be picking his brain. I hope he doesn’t get tired of that.”

Stewart isn’t kidding, either. Talk to those around the Pistons and they all marvel at how devoted Stewart is to maximizing his athletic gifts. In Wallace, he’ll find someone who’ll be extraordinarily giving of his time but beyond that offer rare insight that Stewart – similarly undersized as a center as Wallace was in his day – can process and put to use. All Wallace asked of the young teammates that passed through the rosters he populated was the same dedication to his craft as he invested. Jason Maxiell, for one, benefited greatly from Wallace’s tutelage and wisdom.

Already, Stewart is embracing the idea of serving as the anchor of the Pistons defensively as they prioritize improvement at that end of the floor. There are a thousand steps the 20-year-old and his team must take before any relevant comparisons can be made between this version of the Pistons and Big Ben’s Goin’ to Work bunch, but it’s a journey that won’t be blunted by lack of willpower.

“Being drafted by the Pistons, you’ve got to know some of the rich history and Ben Wallace is a player I did know coming in,” Stewart said. “Just his game and how great he was.”

Rubbing up against greatness is always a dynamic teaching tool if eagerly embraced, which explains why Pistons brass was proactive about sending Stewart and young teammates Saddiq Bey and Cade Cunningham to Springfield early this month to be part of Wallace’s Hall of Fame induction celebration.

“It was an honor,” Stewart said. “Appreciate the Pistons and Ben Wallace for allowing me to be there. It was great to see him be inducted. That’s everyone’s dream, to be a Hall of Famer. To see someone like Ben, who had a great career and played great on the court, for him to go undrafted and to be a Hall of Famer is pretty great.”

Wallace, indeed, had to come in through the NBA’s back door to become the first and only undrafted player ever inducted into the Hall of Fame. Stewart, a five-star recruit and a one-and-done college star, took the red-carpet entrance. But there are far more similarities to their stories than differences, starting with the fiber of their makeup. The Pistons are doing everything in their control to make sure those similarities extend to the unfolding of their time wearing the franchise’s uniform.

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Pistons find the perfect mentor to help Stewart take his next steps: Hall of Famer Ben Wallace

There’s an argument to be made that basketball’s Hall of Fame contains its fair share of players who wouldn’t be members had they played in another era. Just don’t make that argument about Ben Wallace.

He was a four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year in an era where offense was a perpetual struggle. Consider: The average NBA team scored 93.4 points a game when the Pistons won the 2004 title. In an era dominated by defense, Ben Wallace – who officially becomes a member of the Naismith Hall of Fame this weekend – was recognized universally as the NBA’s best defensive player.

Just 17 seasons later, the average NBA team scored 112.1 points a game in 2020-21, more than a 20 percent increase. A dominant defender today in an era with more possessions and more shot attempts would have an even greater ability to affect outcomes … if – and it’s a big if – the way he played defense in his era would translate to what’s asked of defenses in the modern NBA with a premium on defending far more square feet of court space than was required back then.

Ben Wallace answers that question with a resounding “yes.”

“I think my game would be tailor-made for today’s game,” he said in June on the night he represented the Pistons as they won the NBA draft lottery. “In my prime, I was that guy on the floor somewhat out of place because of my size and the way I played the game. I had to play in the land of the giants. The game is a lot faster. I think this style of basketball would’ve been tailor-made for my game.”

The pick and roll has been part of basketball since before the NBA was born 75 years ago, but it wasn’t the dominant piece of every team’s offensive scheme until the past decade or so. There is a sameness to today’s offenses: run pick and roll on one side of the floor, reverse the ball and run it on the other, get defenses on the move to allow penetration and then either produce a layup or exploit collapsing defenses to shake loose an open 3-point shooter.

Ben Wallace smothered – absolutely suffocated – pick-and-roll plays. And nobody who blocked shots or dissuaded layup attempts the way he did covered the ground he covered.

The Goin’ to Work Pistons turned basketball into an art form with their basketball IQ, their discipline and their selflessness. Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton gave them size, shooting and synergy in the backcourt. Tayshaun Prince’s all-around ability at both ends gave them tools to counter any variety of schemes. Rasheed Wallace’s addition at the 2004 trade deadline completed them, adding needed size and athleticism while turbocharging their us-against-them mentality.

But it was Ben Wallace who galvanized them into an elite defensive team, arguably the greatest to ever lace ’em up. In a defense-first era, the Pistons emerged as the NBA’s pre-eminent defense and Ben Wallace was unquestionably at the heart of it. Only Dikembe Mutombo in NBA history can match Wallace’s four Defensive Player of the Year awards.

He played defense with every inch of his being, too, even if it wasn’t all of the 6-foot-9 he was listed at. He played it with his broad shoulders and his massive biceps. He played it with his eyes and his ears and the 6 inches between those ears especially. And most of all he played it with his feet, the feet of a ballet dancer on the body of a blacksmith. Those feet would have made him a menace to modern offenses, blunting pick and rolls before they turned the corner and recovering to the paint to turn away weak-side penetrators.

But what about offense? How would Ben Wallace survive in an era where big men are valued for their ability to shoot from the 3-point line to keep the paint uncluttered and allow freer access to penetration?

No, he probably wouldn’t have developed into a consistent perimeter shooter, though it bears remembering that the Boston Celtics – after Wallace went undrafted in 1996 following his four years at Virginia Union – brought him to Summer League to convert him to shooting guard.

But his screening, his dribble handoffs, his innate sense of how to exploit gaps for rebounding angles and his motor would have absolutely played up in today’s game. When Larry Brown coached the Pistons to the 2004 NBA championship, he encouraged and empowered him to exert a greater influence on the offensive end, too. All that extra space available to drivers and shooters today would have helped him, too, in neutralizing some of the size he gave away when his workspace was limited to a far more confined area.

And all of that would have allowed for an easy adaptation to whatever rules changes and shifts in ideology altered the course of the game over time. Right up to today’s game with its outsized importance on 3-point shooting and floor spacing.

“There’s no rule you can put in place,” he said, “to stop me from playing defense.”

The other headliners going into the Hall of Fame with Wallace this weekend are Chris Webber, Paul Pierce and Chris Bosh. Typically, they are players recalled far more for their ability to put points on the scoreboard, not to prevent them. That’s the recipe for getting to the Hall of Fame. For all the lip service paid to defense as half the game, offense always takes precedence when it comes time for recognition.

Ben Wallace – first undrafted player in NBA history voted to the Hall of Fame – beat those odds, too. He’d be a Hall of Famer in this or any other era.

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In this or any era, Pistons great Ben Wallace a worthy Hall of Famer

Behind the Scenes w/ Ben Wallace - Draft Lottery Night

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Dwane Casey’s first reaction to Ben Wallace’s Hall of Fame induction? Thrilled for Wallace, whom he’s known and admired from his playing days long before Casey had a vested interest in seeing Pistons alumni recognized for their accomplishments. Casey’s second reaction to the Wallace news? Thrilled for how it will amplify the message he imparts to the many young players he now coaches with the Pistons about the virtues of defense, selflessness and teamwork.

And especially how that message will resonate with a player Casey himself has said could one day be a worthy successor to the legacy of Ben Wallace: Isaiah Stewart.

“Just so excited for Ben to finally get in,” Casey said. “Hopefully, we can get him more involved with our team and working with Isaiah because that’s who Isaiah can be like – his work ethic, the size, kind of undersized centers, but play just as hard and team-first like Ben.”

The Big Ben-Beef Stew analogy is inevitable even if their biographies aren’t particularly similar. Stewart came in the NBA’s front door as a first-round draft pick two spots removed from the lottery. Wallace wrangled his way into a junior college invitation that earned him a scholarship at Division II Virginia Union, then went undrafted and got a Summer League invitation with the Boston Celtics to try his hand as a shooting guard.

Stewart, who finished his rookie season at 19, took 12 more 3-point shots in a 72-game season than Wallace launched in his 16-year NBA career. Wallace was 25 and heading to his third NBA home at the time he was traded to Detroit – a remarkable return, as it turned out, for the seeming doomsday scenario of losing Grant Hill in free agency – and 26 by the time he put a Pistons uniform on for the first time.

But what they foremost have in common is obvious and irresistible for Pistons fans – the sheer effort they pour into every possession, their belief that every rebound is theirs to take, their contempt for failure, their relish for dirty work and their delight in the success of teammates. In all of those things, important to Detroit and Pistons fans in a way they aren’t most places, they might as well be identical twins 27 years removed.

Stewart is admirably grounded and knows who he is in a way most 19-year-olds do not, so Wallace getting to the Hall of Fame isn’t going to alter the way he approaches the game or his role at the heart of the Pistons restoration on general manager Troy Weaver’s watch.

But the reinforcement that the ultimate acknowledgment of Wallace’s career was given by his Hall induction certainly should only serve to have Stewart doubling down on the tenets of his NBA resume.

It wasn’t just the rebounds and blocked shots and intimidation factor – the billowing Afro, the bulging biceps, the Big Ben gong to accompany Mason’s player introduction of Buh-Buh-Buh Ben Walllace! – that made the player his teammates called simply “Body” a Hall of Famer.

It was the mastery of dribble handoffs, the blunt force and honed precision of his screens, the understanding of passing angles to set up teammates, the personal affront he took when his man scored, the unfailing hustle, the unyielding example of relentless effort he set for teammates. Mostly, it was his disdain for losing and his willingness to sacrifice all to avoid it that elevated him from basketball’s hinterlands to the NBA to champion to – now – immortality.

No matter how pure a young player’s heart – and Stewart’s is about as pure as it gets – to have a road map for how to transform your greatest desires into a goal within your grasp is always invaluable. Ben Wallace making the Hall of Fame is another brick in the foundation Troy Weaver and Dwane Casey are laying to restore the Pistons to their place among the NBA elites. It will serve Casey well in his daily messaging to all of the many young players finding their way in Pistons uniforms today. It will serve him especially well in the molding of Isaiah Stewart into the block of granite Ben Wallace represents in Pistons lore.

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The Big Ben-Beef Stew analogy takes on new resonance with Wallace’s Hall of Fame nod

Defensive and Rebounding Stalwart Becomes First Undrafted Player to Be Enshrined  

DETROIT, Mich.– Ben Wallace, the defensive anchor of the Detroit Pistons’ 2004 NBA Championship team, has been elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame class of 2021.  The announcement was made earlier today at a private event held in Springfield, MA, site of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.  Wallace becomes the first undrafted NBA player in the modern era to ever be elected to the hall of fame which will be enshrined at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA, on September 11, 2021. 

Undrafted out of Virginia Union, Wallace went on to play 1,088 career NBA games over 16 seasons with Washington, Orlando, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland.   He was acquired by Detroit from the Orlando Magic in 2000, spent nine seasons with the Pistons collecting NBA Defensive Player of the Year honors four times (2002, 2003, 2005, 2006) and was named an NBA All-Star four times (2003-06).  Wallace was an All-NBA Second Team selection three times (2003, 2004, 2006), All-NBA Third Team selection twice (2002 and 2005), an NBA All-Defensive First Team selection five times (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006), and an All-Defensive Second Team selection once (2007).  During his first stint with Detroit (2000-06), the Pistons made the playoffs in five of seven years, winning Eastern Conference Championships in 2004 and 2005 and the NBA Championship in 2004.  Wallace is the franchise’s all-time leader in regular-season and playoff blocks (1,486 and 215, respectively) and ranks first among Pistons’ all-time playoff leaders in rebounds (1,237).  He holds franchise single-game records for blocks in a game (10 – twice), defensive rebounds in a quarter (10) and blocks in a quarter (6).  In 655 games with the Pistons, Wallace averaged 6.6 points, 11.1 rebounds, 2.3 blocks, 1.4 steals and 1.5 assists in 32.6 minutes per game.

For more information on the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, visit www.hoophall.com. 

“Congratulations to Pistons legend Ben Wallace!  His election to the Hall of Fame rightly recognizes his place among the best to ever play the game of basketball.  By always putting his teammates and winning above all else, Ben has contributed so much to the sport and to the rich tradition of our franchise.  He is an icon who inspired generations of basketball players and fans with his effort and tenacity.  His tireless work ethic, grit and determination helped define Pistons basketball and will continue to set the standard for years to come.”

“I had the pleasure of representing Ben during his two stints in Detroit and of the hundreds of athletes I represented in my career as an agent, none put in more effort or was more professional.  Ben’s ascension from humble beginnings, his work ethic and his toughness resonated with Detroiters and it can be argued that no player has struck a greater accord with a city’s sensibilities.  I’m so happy for Ben, I love him, and he’s truly deserving of this great honor.”

 Former Detroit Pistons Player, President of Basketball Operations and Hall of Famer Joe Dumars

“Ben Wallace epitomized Detroit Pistons basketball.   We don’t win a third NBA Championship without Ben Wallace.  He was the foundation for everything we accomplished, and he was simply an incredible basketball player.”

Former Pistons Head Coach and Hall of Famer Larry Brown

“Seeing Ben elected to the Hall of Fame is so neat for me because this serves as an unbelievable lesson for young kids and those who love the game of basketball.  It shows that you don’t have to score the most points to impact the game and whether it be his defense, rebounding or making the right play, Ben impacted the game every single time he stepped on the basketball court.” 

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Detroit Pistons Legend Ben Wallace Elected to Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

If you saw that Ben Wallace was named one of 14 finalists for the Naismith Hall of Fame and your first thought was, “Will he get in this time?,” you’re asking the wrong question. The question should be, “How is Ben Wallace not already in the Hall of Fame?”

The Naismith Hall of Fame is a more mysterious place than Area 51. Nobody knows who casts a ballot. Your best shot at entry is to be a college basketball coach. They get in before they’re qualified as a state pension participant. Win a national title in your 30s or 40s and you’ll likely spend more than half of your coaching career as a Hall of Famer. Much tougher if you’re an NBA head coach.

Tom Izzo, Bill Self and John Calipari are in the Hall of Fame; Gregg Popovich, George Karl and Rick Adelman – all with more than 1,000 career NBA coaching wins – are not.

And if you’re an NBA player, your best shot is to win a championship and score a lot of points. Ben Wallace won a championship – he was the first building block and the soul of the Goin’ to Work Pistons – but didn’t score a lot of points.

But he prevented a lot of points. A lot. Four times he won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award. Nobody’s ever won it more times and only Dikembe Mutombo has as many on his mantel. Twice he led the league in rebounding, once in blocked shots.

For four years in a row, he led the league in defensive win shares and for a staggering seven straight seasons – the first six of them wearing a Pistons uniform – his defensive win shares was 6.0 or higher, including a preposterous 9.1 when the Pistons won the 2003-04 NBA title and Wallace was at the heart of arguably the greatest defensive team in NBA history. For comparative purposes, two-time DPOY Rudy Gobert’s best season was a 6.0 defensive win shares and reigning DPOY Giannis Antetokounmpo’s high is 5.5.

And if you’re thinking, well, that was a different era, think harder. Wallace would be a more valuable, more honored player today than he was during his heyday. He was about 15 years ahead of his time. Wallace went undrafted and brought to Summer League with the Celtics, who tried to convert him into a … shooting guard! Because, hey, what are you going to do with a 6-foot-9 power forward who doesn’t shoot, never mind center. (And 6-foot-9 was a stretch.)

The dominance of the 3-point shot in today’s game and the endless quest for shooters that require defenses to guard many more square feet would put an absolute premium on Wallace’s services. Switch 1 through 5? He could switch 1 through infinity.

One profound reason the Pistons were such a dominant defensive team – remember the stretch of five straight games holding opponents to less than 70 points? – was Wallace’s ability to render pick-and-roll plays impotent. Point guards who would salivate at the opportunity to attack the big man switched onto them would turn the corner, see Big Ben’s menacing Afro and get off the ball with great dispatch.

But players who build their resumes foremost on the defensive end always have a tougher hill to climb than scorers. It’s true in free agency, where scorers almost always cash in, and it’s true in Hall of Fame balloting.

If Wallace had won four scoring titles instead, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. He’d have been in five years ago when first eligible. But even given the bias against defense-first players, Big Ben was a four-time All-Star and five times was named an All-NBA player – regarded among the 15 best players in the game – including three times to the second team.

Something else that probably works against him is the total egalitarian nature of the Goin’ to Work Pistons. Rival coaches would debate who among them was their MVP and there was no right answer. But it was a defense-first team and there was no debate who was the driving force of that suffocating defense.

If the voters want to give more than lip service to the bromide that defense is half the game and that winning matters, Big Ben is a slam-dunk Hall of Famer on both counts. So does he have a chance to get in this time? Wrong question. How is he not in already?

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If the Hall of Fame values defense as part of winning – and values winning itself – then Big Ben is a slam dunk

(EDITOR’S NOTE: While the NBA season is in limbo amid the coronavirus pandemic, Pistons.com will periodically look back at some of the most significant personnel moves – trades, free-agent signings, draft picks – in Pistons history.)

July 4, 2000 – while the rest of America was off at picnics, parades and baseball games – seemed like the darkest day in Pistons franchise history.

Grant Hill, 27 and a five-time All-Star, struck a free-agent deal with the Orlando Magic and – poof! – he was gone.

It might not have induced the same level of bitter disappointment that losing Game 7 of the 1988 or 2005 Finals did, but it fostered an even worse emotion: despair. Even in the gloom of those Game 7 locker rooms, there was the certainty that the Bad Boys and the Goin’ to Work Pistons would get their chance at redemption.

There was no such certainty for the future of the 2000-01 Pistons and beyond with Hill – on whose shoulders so much was laden, labeled as Michael Jordan’s heir when the Pistons drafted him in 1994 – gone in a flash.

Instead, July 4, 2000 turned out to be the day the Pistons added the first building block of what would become an NBA championship team just four years later – a team that would win 50 or more games for seven consecutive seasons and play in six straight conference finals.

Orlando had pointed to the summer of 2000 with grand designs of scoring an unprecedented free-agent coup, wooing not only Hill but Tracy McGrady and Tim Duncan, as well. Duncan eventually decided to remain in San Antonio – imagine the despair on the south central Texas plains if that hadn’t played out – but the Magic got McGrady and weren’t about to let Hill get out of town without agreeing to a maximum deal.

Today’s NBA contracts can be no more than five years in length if signing with the original team or four years if switching franchises. Back then, it was seven and six years. And the annual raises were larger, too – 10 percent if signing with another team, 12.5 percent if with the original team. So the difference between getting a six- or a seven-year deal for Hill were significant – about $20 million over the life of the contract.

But the only way for Hill to get the larger and longer deal was for the Magic to engage the Pistons in a sign and trade. Orlando originally balked; the Magic had the cap space to do the deal without the Pistons help. But when Hill and Lon Babby, the attorney he paid to negotiate his contract, threatened to move on to listen to Phoenix’s pitch, Orlando management got on the phone with the Pistons.

The Pistons asked for Ben Wallace to be a part of the return in trade. Wallace, then 25, had spent three years in Washington and one in Orlando after going undrafted in 1996 out of Virginia Union, and he’d established himself as a high-energy role player. As Orlando’s starting center in 1999-00, Wallace averaged 4.8 points, 8.2 rebounds and 1.6 blocks in 24 minutes a game.

That’s what the Pistons thought they were getting – a defensive plugger who could hold his own on the boards and grow with a young team in recovery mode after losing its superstar anchor.

Orlando didn’t want to give up Wallace, throwing out a few other names instead. But when the prize was Grant Hill – coming off arguably the greatest individual season in Pistons history with 25.8 points, 6.6 rebounds and 5.2 assists a game – and the downside was seeing him sign with Phoenix, parting with an undrafted role player was about as painless as it gets in the superstar-acquisition business.

Wallace averaged 13.2 rebounds and 2.3 blocked shots a game in his first Pistons season, then led the NBA in both categories (13.0 and 3.5) in his second season. He would be named NBA Defensive Player of the Year four times and be named to the All-NBA teams five times over his first tour of duty with the Pistons.

Hill, meanwhile, was beset by ankle injuries that began in his final brilliant season with the Pistons. Over his first four seasons with Orlando, Hill played in only 47 games. When the Pistons won the 2003-04 NBA championship – with Wallace playing 38 minutes a game over 81 games and earning second-team All-NBA honors – Hill didn’t suit up for a single game.

It was about as far-fetched an outcome as you could have conjured on that idyllic July 4 from four years earlier, when it seemed like a future of great possibility for the Pistons had evaporated.