How do the greatest of Detroit’s Golden Era of Sports rank alongside the stars of the last 20-30 years? Where do the old-time legends rate, the players only your great grandpa saw play?

If you’ve ever found yourself involved in a bar room debate about who the greatest was, you came to the right place.

Selecting the greatest in anything is a subjective practice that requires research and analysis. It also relies heavily on personal opinion. No list of the greatest anything is right or wrong. It’s a reflection of the opinions of the list maker.

Here at Detroit Athletic Co., we’re up for the task, so we asked our four regular contributors to select the greatest athletes in Detroit sports history. We took their lists and scored each athlete based on where they rated among our experts and came up with our final rankings. What we came up with is the Top 50 Detroit Athletes of All-Time.

We wanted to select a serious list, so we took the time to established a set of criteria, to help guide our picks. Namely:

1. What were the athletes’ accomplishments in their sport?  Things to consider are titles won, championships, records set, rankings  within their individual sport, career statistics, all-star selections, and individual awards (especially MVP awards).
2. What was the length of their career, and how significant was their contribution as a member of a Detroit team? Did they spend a large portion of their career in Detroit, or at least have major impact here representing the city?
3. How popular was the athlete in Detroit and Michigan? Did he have a lasting impact on his sport or Detroit franchise that still exists today?
4. Did the athlete transcend sports and have a cultural impact on Detroit in some way?
5. Was the athlete a central figure in historical moments that are legendary in Detroit sports history?
6. Was the athlete a major factor in a post-season or playoff series that resulted in a Detroit championship? Call this the clutch factor.
7. Was the athlete inducted into the Hall of Fame for his sport?
8. Did the athlete have an impact on the rules or equipment or play of their specific sport?
9. After their active playing career, did the athlete contribute anything else (as coach, executive, owner, broadcaster, etc.) that significantly added to the enjoyment of sports in Detroit?
10. Has enough time elapsed since the conclusion of the athlete’s career to properly assess his greatness? Or if he is still active, has he accomplished enough to be ranked among the greatest in Detroit sports history?

Our panel of experts:

• Richard Bak, one of the foremost Detroit historians and author of several books on Detroit sports and history, including Cobb Would Have Caught It: The Golden Age of Baseball in Detroit and Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope.
• Tom DeLisle, a longtime writer who has witnessed Detroit sports since the 1940s. In 1967 he was part of a group of writers for the Detroit Free Press who won a Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for their coverage of the Detroit riots.
• Bill Dow, a freelance sportswriter based out of Michigan who has contributed to several publications in the last 12 years and been following Michigan sports for four decades.
• Dan Holmes, a writer and webmaster who worked for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and MLB.com, is the author of one book on baseball, and contributor to two others, including Deadball Stars of the American League.

SEE OUR TOP 50 >

‘Oh, how times they have a changed!’

Today, lefties often have an advantage over their more numerically superior right-handed counterparts. In sports, lefties can use their handedness to set themselves apart, make themselves confusing to opponents, and forge long careers as specialists.

Many of the most successful athletes in history were left-handed. Babe Ruth, certainly the most famous American athlete, was a lefty. Here are five left-handers who are famous in Detroit sports lore, not just for their favored hands, but also their success and popularity.

Ty Cobb
Before the Babe, and before Detroit was known as the Motor City, Ty Cobb was baseball’s greatest ballplayer and an icon in Detroit. Cobb threw right-handed but  batted left-handed. He was never known for his arms though – his legs were his most powerful limbs – performing daring baserunning feats in the era of the deadball. From the left side of the plate, Cobb hit .367 for his career, far and away the highest mark in baseball history. Cobb loved golf, though he was never a great player on the links, and he used his left-handed clubs in his famous matches against Ruth during the 1930s.

Hal Newhouser
Though it was brief, Newhouser’s greatness surpasses all other pitchers in Tigers history, at least so far. He won two MVP Awards and topped the 20-victory mark four times in a five-year stretch from 1944-1948. Born in Detroit, “Prince Hal” was famous for his overhand curveball, which was especially difficult for left-handers to hit. Among lefties (since 1900), only Lefty Grove ever eclipsed Newhouser’s 29 wins in a season.

Terry Sawchuk
As long as he was in a Red Wings sweater, Sawchuk played brilliantly and stayed away from trouble. But when he got off the ice or went elsewhere to play for other hockey clubs, he found pain and ultimately death. The left-handed Canadian was in net for the Wings before his 20th birthday, and he won the NHL”s Rookie of the Year award after flashing brilliant reflexes in the goal. He helped lead the Wings to four Stanley Cup titles, and put up an almost impossible-to-believe total of 115 shutouts. In 1970, Sawchuck was with the New York Rangers when he got into a playful scuffle with his roommate, suffering internal injuries. After scores of injuries, many serious, over the course of his 21-year NHL career, and battles with depression, Sawchuk died days later. He was only 40 years old.

Mickey Lolich
Through a fluke accident when he was just a toddler, Lolich became a left-hander. Little Mickey tipped over a relative’s motorcycle and hurt his left arm as a result. when it came out of the cast he was forced to use it to strengthen it, and he soon became a lefty. And what a great lefty he was. growing up in Oregon, where there wasn’t a major league club to root for, Lolich idolized the Yankees and Whitey Ford. By the time he was in his 20s, Lolich was facing Ford in the big leagues. With a sharp 90-93 MPH fastball that he could buzz past the batter’s knees, Mickey was an excellent hurler for the Tigers. Of course, in the ’68 World Series, the southpaw won three games, including Game Seven on two days rest, to cement his place in Detroit lore. He still holds the career record for most strikeouts by a lefty in American League history.

Bob Lanier
In the 1970 NBA Draft, just as Sawchuk was checking out and Lolich was illuminating his star for the Tigers, Lanier was selected as the overall #1 by the Detroit Pistons. With that selection, the Pistons turned around the fortunes of the franchise, laying the groundwork for later glory. Though the left-handed Lanier never won a title with Detroit, he spent parts of ten seasons in Motown, making his signature moves in and around the basket and establishing himself as one of the NBA’s best (and most physical) big men. He brought respectability to the Pistons, and helped by his patented left-handed hook shoot from eight foot range, he amassed a 22.4 career PPG average in Detroit. Though his left hand puts Lanier on this list, he was also famous for his feet – size 22 feet – that were some of the biggest in sports history.

After nine seasons in Detroit, Rip Hamilton ranks sixth all-time in scoring for the Pistons.

If it looked like Richard Hamilton was constantly in motion during his tenure with the Detroit Pistons, you don’t know the half of it.

When he was on the court, Hamilton displayed an array of moves to get open so he could receive a pass and get to the net. #32 was one of the best in the NBA at moving without the basketball.

But what many people don’t know is that Hamilton was moving almost every chance he got while he was in Detroit, whether he was on the court or not. The 6-foot-7 guard, who was a three-time All-Star and integral part of the second Pistons dynasty which included an NBA title in 2004, has always loved to run.

Although the popular Piston has several nicknames: “Rip” and “Masked Marvel” most famously, he probably should have been known as Detroit’s “Running Man” because of the spring in his legs and incredible durability. When he was a teenager, Hamilton was so good, so fast, that he made his high school track team without even training.

“The coach said,’Rip, you don’t even have to come to the practices. Just show up for the meet’ “, Hamilton told Runner’s World in 2004.

A miler, Hamilton was amazing – winning every race he ran in high school except one, when he miscalculated how many laps he had to go. His love of speed never left him – at the University of Connecticut his coaches constantly tried to slow him down. But they didn’t slow him down too much – he helped the Huskies to the NCAA Title in 1999 when he was named the tournament’s Outstanding Player. Later in Detroit, Hamilton clashed at times with Larry Brown because of his fast breaks up the hardwood, Brown wanting him to slow down, see the floor, and set up the offense.

Hamilton’s nickname “Rip” goes back a long way, and it hints at his speedy ways. As a baby, Hamilton tore away his diapers, ripping them in an effort to break free from their constraints. Even as an infant, Hamilton had somewhere to go fast. His father dubbed him “Rip” because of all the diaper ripping.

Even during grueling basketball seasons, Hamilton has been a runner, usually running several miles on his days off from practice or adding a fast mile after practice if he felt he needed it. Regardless, Hamilton’s philosophy was always to run all out. He sprints his miles as fast as he can, preferring to run to exhaustion.

This week, after having his contract bought out by the Pistons, for whom he starred for nine seasons, Hamilton ends his stellar career with Detroit. He leaves behind an impressive legacy in Motown. He’s the all-time Pistons playoff scoring leader, supplanting Isiah Thomas. He was part of the swaggering Detroit teams that advanced to six consecutive Eastern Conference Finals, something only the legendary Boston Celtics teams of the 1960s and early 1970s accomplished. He scorched the Knicks for 51 points one night, becoming the only player not named Michael Jordan to go for 50 at Madison Square Garden. He led his team in scoring one game when he didn’t make a field goal, making all of his shots from the free throw line. He wore that famous mask after breaking his nose twice in the same season, calling it his “Superman Cape” as he continued to wear it the remainder of his career. When he was used as a sixth man later in his Pistons stay, he scored 38 points off the bench against the Bucks, the most by a reserve in franchise history.

“I’m proud to be a Piston,” Hamilton has said. “I’ll always be a Piston in my heart.”

Hamilton leaves as one of the greatest players in franchise history, but he’s not being run out of town, he’s just taking his “running man” act someplace else.

Dennis Rodman and John Salley were both selected by the Detroit Pistons in the 1986 NBA Draft.

The National Basketball Association draft can be a crap shoot. Even the top picks can prove to be duds. Does anyone remember Sam Bowie? How about Kwame Brown? Add Greg Oden to the list, too.

Fortunately, the Detroit Pistons had a wise basketball wizard at the helm in the 1980s. General Manager Jack McCloskey had the midas touch for several years as the brains behind the Pistons, with many of his best decisions leading to the dynasty that was the “Bad Boys” of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Twenty-five years ago, in the 1986 NBA Draft, McCloskey made two of his best decisions when he drafted not one, but two future stars.

The Pistons were a good team already, having made the playoffs each of the three previous seasons. But the Atlanta Hawks in their own division and the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference, were still treating them like punching bags. The Pistons needed some new blood.

McCloskey wanted to improve his defense, and one of his great desires was to acquire a shot blocker. He had his eye on John Salley, a tough east coast kid who played college ball at Georgia Institute of Technology. Salley was just a shade under 7-foot and he was projected to be a good NBA player. Drafting at the #11 spot, McCloskey thought he’d still have a shot at Salley, as many other pure scorers were going to be picked before him. Scouts thought Salley needed work on his perimeter game and on playing with his back to the basket. McCloskey wanted him for his long arms and shot blocking ability.

It so happened that the Pistons had an early pick in the second round that year, due to a trade. It would be the 27th overall pick of the draft. McCloskey toyed with trading that pick until he set his eyes on a player in April at the Portsmouth Invitational, a tournament set up so NBA officials could take a look at college seniors who will be eligible for the draft.

Dennis Rodman was a 6-foot 7-inch forward playing at tiny Southeastern Oklahoma State, an NAIA school that received little attention. But Rodman was putting up some amazing numbers on the court, so he got an invite. At Portsmouth, Rodman was the best player in the tournament. He was jumping all over the gym grabbing rebounds and making putback baskets against competition from major colleges. McCloskey was impressed, but so were many other scouts.

Then at subsequent invitationals against stiffer competition, Rodman performed poorly. His stock dropped. McCloskey was puzzled until he heard from his training staff: Rodman was riddled with allergies. The training staff assured McCloskey that they could get Rodman’s allergies under control.

That’s where McCloskey went into sleuth mode: he put out feelers with every team ahead of the Pistons in the draft to see what they were saying about Rodman. No one was even mentioning him. It was a gamble, but “Trader Jack” felt he could snatch Rodman at #27.

On draft day, the Pistons selected Salley with the 11th pick, giving them the shot blocker McCloskey wanted in the middle of his defense. As the picks clicked away, Rodman was still on the board. Michigan State guard Scott Skiles went to the Bucks at #22. The Lakers took Ken Barlow from Notre Dame next, then the Trailblazers took Arvydas Sabonis from the U.S.S.R., and the Cavs nabbed Mark Price at #25. McCloskey was drooling at the thought of getting Rodman. He thought the high-strung youngster with amazing energy and the ability to jump like a pogo stick, would fit perfectly in a revamped Piston lineup that would focus on defense.

The Indiana Pacers had the 26th pick, the second selection of the second round. They immediately selected 7-footer Greg Dreiling, a player they’d had their eye on. McCloskey had his man. The Pistons picked Rodman at #27.

Most Detroit fans were familiar with Salley, as he’d been bantered about among NBA experts that spring, but Dennis Rodman was a mystery. What had McCloskey gotten?

In the 1986-1987 season, the rookie year for Salley and Rodman, Pistons fans soon realized what they had. The pair became known as the “X-Factor”. Salley led the team with 125 blocks and averaged just over five points per game. Rodman averaged 6.5 points off the bench and provided defensive spark, drawing charges and delighting the crowd with his fist-pumping enthusiasm.

With the rookies, the Pistons won 50 games for the first time in 13 years and advanced to the Conference Finals. They would go to the NBA Finals the following three years, winning twice. Salley and Rodman were key members of the “Bad Boys”.

McCloskey was a keen judge of talent: Salley played 13 years in the NBA, winning four titles with three different teams. Tutored by Adrian Dantley as a young Piston, later in his career Salley became an elder statesman himself and helped others make the jump to the NBA.

Rodman exceeded everyone’s expectations – except those of McCloskey. The small forward (just a bit over 6-foot-6) defied the odds and led the NBA in offensive rebounds six times, defensive rebounds three times, and overall rebounds four times. He paced the league in rebounds per game in seven consecutive seasons. His rebound percentage ranks in the top twelve in NBA history.

When he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011 (the only player drafted in ’86 who entered the Hall of Fame based on his NBA career alone), he tearfully thanked McCloskey in his induction speech.

A return to healthy form by forward Jonas Jerebko would help the Detroit Pistons become a team to watch again.

In a recent post about the Detroit Pistons, Matt Moore of NBC Sports wrote something that might sound shocking to fans who have watched the lackadaisical, uninspired and poor play of the team over the last two seasons:

“Very quietly, Dumars has drafted exceptionally well over the past few years. Austin Daye, Jonas Jerebko, Greg Monroe, and Brandon Knight. You throw in a superstar wing after a year of spectacular sucking (hello, Harrison Barnes!) and you’ve got something cooking there. Fill it out with free agency after a purge and you have a real shot at building something.”

Moore’s take on that group of young players might seem overly optimistic, but he’s not wrong. Although the Pistons’ young talent is relatively unproven, they have players with incredibly high ceilings. From January on, Greg Monroe was the third best rookie in the NBA last season behind Blake Griffin and John Wall. Paired with a healthy Jonas Jerebko next season, the Pistons might have the best offensive rebounding duo in the league, something that should create numerous extra possessions per game.

Daye hasn’t found a consistent spot in the rotation yet, but he’s one of the best natural shooters in the NBA (40 percent from 3-point range last season). He has a quick release, a fluid offensive game and as the Oklahoma City Thunder can attest with Kevin Durant, having a 6-foot-11 perimeter player with unlimited range creates constant matchup problems.

Brandon Knight slipped some in the NBA Draft after an up and down freshman season at Kentucky, but his pedigree is undeniable. The three John Calipari point guards who made the NBA before Knight have won a combined two Rookie of the Year awards and one, Derrick Rose, already has an MVP award after just three seasons in the league.

The problem with the Pistons, very obviously, is not the young guys. As we saw last season, holdover veterans Richard Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince didn’t adjust well from being contributors on title contending teams to playing for a rebuilding team. High-priced younger veterans Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva have seen their production fall off a cliff and have proven to be finesse players who don’t fit within the defensive principles that Joe Dumars built a contending team around. Rodney Stuckey is kind of stuck in the middle – he’s old enough to have been around the last time the Pistons made a deep playoff run, but doesn’t really fit in with the new guard or the old guard. It’s as if the Pistons have two mini rosters that don’t compliment each other well, have competing agendas and have positional duplicities that would make the job of any coach trying to figure out a sensible rotation a nightmare.

The solution isn’t as easy as simply purging those veterans. Prince is a free agent who will likely sign elsewhere, but Hamilton, Gordon and Villanueva all have hefty long-term deals that they haven’t lived up to. Worse, if the salary cap is reduced when a new collective bargaining agreement is finalized, teams might be even less inclined to make a deal for one of those players hoping they return to form.

Every NBA fan wants the lockout to end and the season to start. But for the Pistons, the lockout came at a pretty opportune moment. The best thing that will help the salary situation is simply time elapsing. Jerebko has had a chance to fully rehab from his Achilles tendon injury. Second round pick Kyle Singler got a chance to play overseas in Spain, where he’s had some impressive games so far. Daye worked out all summer at the famed Impact Training Facility in Las Vegas with NBA stars like Durant, Chauncey Billups and Paul Pierce, then signed a contract to play professionally in Russia until the lockout ends. And a little more time has ticked away on the deals of Hamilton, Gordon and Villanueva, hopefully helping them just a bit easier to trade should the Pistons decide to commit to a full rebuilding effort.

It’s always hard from a nostalgic perspective to cut ties with players like Hamilton and Prince, who have meant so much to an organization. But when the lockout finally ends, dramatic changes to the Pistons roster should offer fans new hope as an exciting group of young players begins to come of age and start the process of cementing the Pistons as one of the league’s flagship franchises again.

Patrick Hayes has written about the Pistons for PistonPowered in ESPN’s TrueHoop Network and MLive. You can purchase his book, Piston Devotion: The ups and downs of a long-term relationship with the most underappreciated franchise in sports, through Amazon/CreateSpace. Follow him on Twitter.

Rodman’s career was exactly what the NBA wanted, a mix of passion and entertainment that fed into the league’s image in the early ’90s. He symbolized the antagonist to a play led by Jordan, Barkley and others, something that David Stern enjoyed to rally his strict policing of the league around. What has been most intriguing about the last few months in Rodman’s life, has been the amount of support that the public truly did not know about. Who would have thought that Isiah Thomas was still on talking terms with Rodman? Who would have thought that people like Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Phil Jackson and David Robinson were all friendly and on talking terms with Rodman?

Lost in Rodman’s flamboyant outfit from the induction ceremony, was a small lapel pin that carried a lot of meaning for both Dennis and for Pistons fans. “CD” is not lost in the minds of former Pistons players. and Chuck Daly was looking down on both the recent jersey retirement and the Hall of Fame ceremony in Springfield. Daly was as much of a father-figure to Rodman, as any individual in Dennis’ life, and his absence over the past year clearly left a void for Detroit’s number 10.

Watching this past year of Dennis Rodman’s life has also left many to question what the end game looks like. Dennis seems very content with the fast life he’s living, and those close to him are hoping that he’ll avoid the impending crash that seems both likely and inevitable. For the rest of us that have watched his career from a distance, we look forward to seeing every highlight along the way.

If this would have been in June, or pretty much any other time in the history of the NBA, Coach Frank would have been able to highlight what current Pistons he looked most forward to coaching. At any other time Frank could have discussed how any of the Pistons roster fit into his coaching scheme. Well, this is not any time, and this news conference highlights how the NBA that we have learned to appreciate may forever be changed.

The only news the NBA has had as of late has been about their players that are departing the league for other locations around the globe. Even with the league not scheduled to start for another 100 days, some of the league’s finest have already settled on playing everywhere but the NBA next season. The NBA has always touted itself to be a global game, and now it is having that theory proved by its own players.

Whenever the league, and the Pistons, get started up again, who knows what the Pistons will even look like? There’s a chance that some of the team’s veterans may see the final years of their contracts eaten up by a season that may never take place. From what I heard from one NBA beat reporter, the league is willing to take this well into next year to gain “NFL-like” command on its players. If that’s the case, Tom Gores’ first full year as Pistons owner may come without any income from ticket revenue.

As Coach Frank looks forward to cleaning up quite the mess that has been left behind by a team still stuck in 2004, he will have an incredible amount of time to draw his plans out as he is not allowed to have contact with his players. For some players that could potentially report anywhere from game ready to completely out of shape, Frank will try to frame a defensive philosophy to a team stuck in an offense-first league. In the meantime, there’s got to be a coaching clinic somewhere to lend his skills at.

Unlike when he made the change from Rick Carlisle or from Larry Brown, the latest moves were done in reaction to losing a team. The only question now is how long before Lawrence Frank loses this team?

Frank’s time as the head man in New Jersey went from a great deal of excitement to a team that was already looking beyond their coach to something else. In a tenure that sounded very similar to that of Flip Saunders, the team Frank left behind was significantly worse than the one he inherited. His relationship with Richard Jefferson became so bad that Jefferson was shipped out of town right before Frank’s 0-16 start doomed his career.

While Frank may be known as a defensive strategist and an extremely hard worker, the better choices would have been to bring in either Bill Laimbeer or Mike Woodson. Laimbeer would have undoubtedly been an extremely interesting hire and experiment, as he lacks NBA head coaching experience. It didn’t help Laimbeer’s cause that he is considered a quitter following his exit from the Shock. Dumars brought him in as a courtesy, and it may only continue to fracture the franchise’s relationship with its biggest names.

Woodson would have been a fantastic bridge between the 2004 mentality and the young core that the Pistons would like to develop into a team of the future. His tenure at Atlanta was considered a decent success on the most part, as he took a team of young speedsters and turned them into a perennial playoff participant. While the team improved every year under his watch, he was fractious with Hawks management and was eventually removed. He was known as being a favorite of players and could have been a solution to the divisiveness that currently represents the Pistons locker room.

Debate aside, the choice has been made. Frank will greet a team following the lockout at some point in the future, and his first goal will be to bring together a team and win some games. If not, we will have this debate again next year.

Of course, all of this may not mean anything if a labor agreement is not reached by the league and its players. Assuming that the NBA decides to play at some point in the next decade, the Pistons will need a coach that carries some clout with a mix of youth and holdover players with a ring. Dumars’ inability to transition his Pistons over the past five-plus years, has put both his team on the edge of irrelevance and his job on the edge of existence.

Who could this next coach of the Pistons be? It seems that the top list of names is dotted with one of three groups: 1) 2004 Pistons assistant coaches; 2) former NBA head coaches; and 3) stretch head coaching candidates. The leading candidate in the first group would likely be former Hawks coach Mike Woodson, seemingly now the clubhouse leader for the job. John Kuester at one time fit in this group, therefore making Woodson’s candidacy seem less appealing.

The former head coaches pool includes both Lawrence Frank and Isiah Thomas. I’ve got to imagine that Isiah’s appeal is mostly with fans who have 20-year amnesia. His “issues” while running the New York Knicks have likely not gone unnoticed. While his players swear by his abilities, Dumars will likely shy away from another Larry Brown-esque ego in the head coaching position.

The stretch head coaching group is probably the most intriguing of the three coaching groups. With Bill Laimbeer, Kelvin Sampson, and (potentially) Tom Izzo in the mix, the Pistons could bring in a coach that would have the potential of logging a number of years for the team. If not, we could be talking about the Pistons opening yet again, one year from now.

When the Fab Five documentary first aired a few months back, the uproar surrounding the film was not around the actions of the players or the scandal that continues to surround the talented squad. Instead, Rose and company highlighted what they thought of Grant Hill and his Duke Blue Devils, using very racially charged commentary. Immediately on his pulpit at ESPN, Rose had to defend his statements and essentially save his career for voicing the thoughts that he had as a teenager growing up in the inner city. If his comments had not been directed to one of basketball’s finest gentleman, maybe this story would have been different.

The timing could not have been any worse for Rose, and who knows if the stress of the Hill feud had led him to martini numbers five and six. Just days after the release of The Fab Five: A Documentary, an inebriated Rose got into a car accident with a female companion in the vehicle with him in West Bloomfield. It was ill timing and could potentially land the former NBA player in jail for up to 90 days. Unlike the Hill tizzy that had a defined end date, the court proceedings could linger for weeks.

The shame to this entire situation, is how much of an ambassador of both UofM and basketball that Jalen Rose has become. He was a fantastic analyst on ESPN and he is not long removed from having some big seasons with Indiana and Chicago. Rose has lately used his status to become a leader in the challenging community where he first honed his basketball skills. It can only be everyone’s hope that he has learned that his actions, both negative and positive, have a tremendous impact on those that look up to all that he has represented.