Finalized! It's the Pistons vs. the Lakers
The storied Bad Boys of the NBA are gone now; only Joe Dumars remains as the president of basketball operations for the Detroit Pistons.
But last night some of them were at the Palace -- Vinnie Johnson, Bill Laimbeer, even former coach Chuck ("Daddy Rich") Daly -- to watch their heirs -- Ben Wallace, Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Chauncey Billups, Rasheed Wallace, et. al. -- finally graduate to the NBA Finals.
Mitch Albom writes this in the Detroit Free Press:
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends -- it just takes a hiatus for 14 years. June basketball -- championship basketball -- is here once more, honking the horn like an old high school buddy in his familiar sports car, top down, music blaring, harking back to days when we all had more hair and more energy, and this same blue-collar franchise did battle with the mambo kings of glitz, the L.A. Lakers.Hey, listen -- the Shaq & Kobe Lakers have never lost in the Finals. Coach Phil Jackson has never lost in the Finals (remember Michael Jordan?). Karl Malone took peanuts to get to the Finals one more time.Rev up the engines.
Bad is back.
All the same -- Bad is back.
P.S. Loved the reference to Ben Wallace's hair (above, left) in this Free Press headline: "Westward 'Fro!"
P.P.S. Swirlspice moved away, but she still loves her Pistons.