Preface
Jordan, Bird, and Magic, these three players are very famous supergiants in NBA history, and they were very dominant at their peak. Jordan has led the team to three consecutive championships, and now the MVP trophy is named after him, Bird has won three championships and three consecutive MVPs, and Magic has won five championships and is the youngest FMVP in history. The honors of these three players are not enough to introduce in one article, but the three of them have been abused by the same team in the same season, and this team is the famous "Bad Boy Army" Detroit Pistons in the 1988-1989 season, let's review their championship journey that year, and see how they "stepped on" these three supergiants to win the O'Brien Cup one after another!
Six players on the team scored in double figures, and the regular season record ranked first in the league
Prior to the 1988-1989 season, the Pistons had made the playoffs five years in a row, and in 1988 they reached the Finals. Facing the Los Angeles Lakers, the Pistons once rewrote the big score to a 3-2 lead, but they encountered a black whistle in G6. At the end of the game, the Pistons led by 1 point, and in the next crucial defensive round, the referee blew a Pistons foul, so Abdul-Jabbar also stood on the free throw line, but Ranbir obviously didn't touch him at that time, so this whistle is also known as a "phantom foul", and finally this blow directly changed the direction of the series, and the Pistons lost to the Lakers in the tie-break.
It was precisely because of this painful loss that the Pistons stimulated their deeper potential, so in the 1988-1989 season they played absolute dominance from the regular season, and after 82 games, they finished 63-19 and ranked first in the league, and they were the only ones in the entire league with 60+ wins.
Although no player on the entire team averaged more than 20+ points per game that season, and their leader Isaiah Thomas also averaged "only" 18.2 points, 3.3 rebounds, 8.3 assists and 1.7 steals per game, under the tutelage of head coach Chuck Daley, including Thomas, they had six players score in double figures at the same time, which is enough to see how team this Pistons play.
However, the Pistons' offense is not particularly good in the league after all, with an average of 106.6 points per game that can only rank 16th in the league, so they can win more by defense, and the defensive effect of 100.8 points per game can rank second in the league.
The sweep of the Green Army in the first round showed the style of the regular season dominance
In the first round, the Pistons faced the Celtics, who had eliminated them in the 1987 Eastern Conference finals, but this time the Pistons were much better than before, and the Celtics also lost their leader Bird, who was out early for the season due to injury. There was no suspense in this series from the beginning, and in the end it was easily taken away by the Pistons with a big score of 3-0, and two of them were more than double digits.
Joe Dumas is undoubtedly the team's best player in this series, he averaged 20.7 points, 2 rebounds and 6 assists per game, but although the overall strength of the Celtics is quite different from the Pistons, it can be seen from their player performance that they have not given up lightly, in addition to Joe Thomas, the two players with the highest points per game in the entire series are Rejay Lewis of the Green Army with 20.3 points and McHale with 19 points.
In the second round, the offensive and defensive ends were full of firepower, and easily took away the Bucks 4-0
In the second round against the Bucks, who won 49-33 in the regular season, although there are no well-known top superstars in this team, they are also very good as a whole, with seven players scoring double-doubles in the regular season, and the team's average of 108.9 points per game can also rank 11th in the league, and compared with the Pistons, the Bucks' star Bloomings was also selected for the best three with 22.9 points and 8.1 rebounds.
In addition, the Bucks, like the Pistons, also rely mainly on defense to win, and they conceded an average of 105.3 points per game in the regular season to rank sixth in the league, and when they eliminated the Hawks led by Wilkins in the first round, the Bucks limited them to 111 points per game in the regular season, limiting them to only 2 out of 5 games exceeding the average level of the regular season.
However, after touching the Pistons, the Bucks wilted and were directly taken away by them with a wave of 4-0. The Pistons have scored more than 110 points in two of their four games, and through their own defense, they have also suppressed the Bucks' overall offense, which has not scored more than 95 points in one game in the entire series. Although Bucks player Ricky Pierce broke out, averaging 22.5 points per game, in the end, the Bucks still couldn't compete with the Pistons, after all, no matter how strong their individual performance was, they couldn't beat a better team.
The Eastern Conference finals against Jordan sent him home for the second year in a row
In the Eastern Conference semifinals of the 1988 playoffs, Jordan and the Bulls were eliminated by the Pistons. In the playoffs, the Bulls continued to knock out the second Cavaliers in the East and the Knicks in the fourth place in the East, Jordan was the absolute protagonist in these two series, he averaged 39.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, 8.2 assists and 3 steals per game against the Cavaliers, and against the Knicks he averaged 35.7 points, 9.5 rebounds, 8.3 assists, 2.5 steals and 1.3 blocks per game, and he was undoubtedly the most outstanding player in the playoffs at that time.
At the beginning of the series, the Bulls temporarily led 2-1 with Jordan's 33+11 and 46+7+5+5 performances, but since then the Pistons have stabilized their position, relying on their best defense, they have limited the Bulls' scoring to less than 90 points in two consecutive games, so they also got match points.
In the sixth game of the series, Thomas and Jordan began to face off, the former scored 33 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals, while Jordan had 32 points, 4 rebounds, 13 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks. However, in the face of the Pistons' high-pressure defense, Jordan could only keep passing, so he handed out 13 assists while he made 8 turnovers by himself, and it was with his mistakes that the Pistons got more shots, and finally they won the battle when their overall shooting percentage was not as good as the Bulls.
The revenge of the Purple and Gold won the first championship in team history
After six games against the Bulls, the Pistons are back in the Finals, and their path to the Finals is significantly smoother than that of the Lakers, who have won three consecutive series with sweeping scores, and under the leadership of the Magic, they can still play a very flashy offense even against the stronger playoffs.
Just when everyone thought that the Pistons and Lakers would have another big battle in the Finals, the situation took a direction in an unexpected direction, due to injuries and aging core, the Lakers simply did not have the strength to compete with the Pistons, and they lost to their opponents by a double-digit margin of 97-109 in the first game. After seeing the Lakers' obvious physical exhaustion and injury troubles, the Pistons did not give the latter a chance to breathe, and won four games in a row to end the suspense of the series, and Dumas was also successfully elected FMVP with an average of 27.3 points and 6 assists per game.
In fact, it can be seen from the single-digit difference in the last three games that the Lakers are not not strong enough, they just lost at a critical moment and couldn't keep up, the team's core scorer Scott can't play, Abdul-Jabbar is 41 years old, he said before the start of the season that this is his retirement season, and Magic and others are also suffering from injuries. But a win is a win, and the Pistons' performance this season has been very dominant, they only lost two games to the Bulls in the entire playoffs, and finally finished with a 15-2 record.