Tony Becca - FROM THE BOUNDARYWHEN THE 2004 NBA finals got underway in the famous Staple Center, the odds were overwhelmingly in favour of the Los Angeles Lakers to add one more championship to their already glittering collection.
To every Lakers fan, to almost every basketball fan, the question was not who would win but in how many games.
After knocking off the San Antonio Spurs at the start of the playoffs in what many believed was the finals, it should have been easy for the Lakers - so easy that only the generous gave the Detroit Pistons a game, or at best, two games.
As far as the fans were concerned, including some Piston fans, the Lakers, with superstars Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, arguably the two best players in the league, with veterans Karl Malone and Gary Payton who are heading for the Hall of fame and who had signed up with the Lakers in a desperate bid for a ring, were simply the best in the game and were tipped to march past the Pistons who boasted no one in their line-up to match O'Neal and Bryant.
In one of, if not the greatest upset in the history of the contest, however, the Pistons, without any one of Hall of Fame calibre, knocked off the Lakers, and in doing so, not in Game Seven but in Game Five, they did it in style.
In Game one in LA, the Pistons won 87-75, in Game Two, again in LA, the Pistons lost 91-99 in overtime after an astonishing three-pointer by Bryant had tied it up at 89, and in Game Three, Game Four and Game Five in their Auburn Hills house, the Pistons won 88-68, 88-80, and 100-87 respectively.
It was an awesome performance by the Pistons - a performance during which they became the first team to win the three middle games at home, a performance during which Lakers coach Phil Jackson lost three successive games in the playoffs for the first time in his illustrious career, a performance during which they handed Jackson his first loss in 10 NBA finals, and a performance which could have ended in a shutout but for Bryant's amazing shot in Game Two.
DOMINATING
With the Pistons, the underdogs, dominating almost every quarter and winning by 12, by 20, by eight and by 13 after leading by 27 a few minutes from the end, it was easy pickings for the new champions.
As the Lakers limped away to their locker room and the ecstatic fans serenaded the happy Pistons, the question on everyone's lips, certainly those who had backed them to win, and comfortably at that, was what had happened to the Lakers?
The truth is that it had nothing to do with the Lakers. It was all to do with the Pistons.
According to a number of experts, part of the Lakers' problem was that they did not want it as much as the Pistons, and although the Piston's Ben Wallace said so after Game Three, while that may be true, it was more, much more, than that.
Apart from their stifling defence, apart from the tactics of coach Larry Brown who found the right markers for O'Neal and Bryant, the Pistons were faster, stronger and more aggressive, they ran for every second of play, they hustled for every ball, and that is why, with 171 for and 111 against, with 228 for and 188 against they won more free throws and hauled in more rebounds.
The key to success in a team sport, however, is teamwork, and apart from the belief that they could win, that, more than any other reason, was why the Piston were so dominant.
Unlike the Lakers who had only two players, O'Neal and Bryant, scoring 10 points or more in any game, the Pistons had a number of players doing so. That meant that while the Pistons could block out two Lakers players, the Lakers could not do so - not without paying the price.
While the Lakers had O'Neal and Bryant and hardly anyone else, the Pistons had Chauncey Billups, Richard Hamilton, Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace and Tayshaun Prince plus a few others.
Two placards in Auburn Hills, one in Game Four and one in Game Five, said it all.
Placard number one: 'We see Shaq and Kobe but where are the Lakers?'
Placard number two: 'A full house is better than a pair.'
