Could this year's Celtics team share any similarities with the 2004 NBA Championship Pistons? To understand this post it might be necessary to think back to the 2003-04 season for a few brief moments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8YIf you'll remember, even though the Pistons and the Lakers had very similar regular-season records going into that year's playoffs (Detroit 54-28 vs Los Angeles 56-26) it wasn't much of a secret that the 'Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty' were still heavily favored to win it all again even after Phil Jackson had 3-peated for the third time in his coaching career two seasons prior. What was worse is that during the summer before the 2003 season the Lakers sought to add to their winning formula of Kobe Bryant + Shaquille O'Neil by acquiring veteran players who were still hungry for a ring after years of being handled by the Jordan-era Bulls during the 90's (Gary Payton and Karl Malone).
Even with all of the hype that the Lakers had going into that year's finals (see Derrick Fisher's 0.4 second shot over the Spurs), they were still defeated by a defensive-minded Detroit Pistons squad in just 5 games, regardless of the fact that they had homecourt advantage against every team besides the Minnesota Timberwolves led by a young Kevin Garnett (interestingly enough the LA Lakers franchise was founded in Detroit, Michigan and then relocated to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1947).
http://www.nba.com/lakers/history/lakers_history_new.htmlYes, it was the Detroit Pistons of all teams that left the Lakers feeling 'lost and jealous' at the end of the 2004 season, a result that ushered in a five-year title drought which gave the Celtics enough time to acquire the 'Big 3' before the 'Lake Show' recovered.
Unfortunately, the one thing that might prevent this team from being favorably compared to the 2004 NBA Champion Pistons is the fact that we still aren't on pace to match that team's regular season record as far as the wins column is concerned (even after thrashing the 'Pacers' earlier tonight). We would have to chose between winning a bunch of games that may end up being meaningless in the grand scheme of things or just resting our guys and letting the younger players go to work as this year's season winds down. Either way, it might be risky to go all-out if we are confident that we can get things together come playoff time - the Boston Celtics aren't particularly known around the league as underdogs, regardless of what our current season record tells you...
Topic: 2003-04 Detroit Pistons?? (Read 1398 times)