Sports in this town are extremely different than they are in other cities. Since we are a city that does not generally take public transportation to see our teams play (see Chicago, New York, etc.), we frequently find our passion in our workplaces and via online forums.

Our teams have also seen the wide spectrum of joys and heartbreaks that can potentially take place in one sport, and we feel that a ticket is more than a seat – it’s an investment in a team’s payroll and future. It’s in times like these when every one of our teams may see a new owner by 2020, that we begin to band together to make sure that our teams are staying home for the long haul. Our Pistons shouldn’t be in Kansas City, much like our Tigers did not move to Tampa, or the Lions to Los Angeles.

It is based on this city’s passionand persona, that the ownership search has turned out in its current manner. Mike Ilitch and co. could have easily stayed away from the buzz, but they knew what it meant to their business to simply throw their hat in the ring. Magic Johnson still has a big following in this town, even though he spurned Wolverines fans in playing for MSU in the late ’70s and he often played a role as enemy for the rival Lakers in the ’80s.

There’s been other names too, some originally from this area, some not, but all will realize soon enough that this team is as much Detroit as the team itself.

“It’s wonderful to finally be in the position to advance to the second round (of the playoffs).” – Tracy McGrady before Game 5 of the 2003 NBA Playoff first round vs. Detroit (Orlando leading 3-1)

For all of the magic McGrady created during the 82 games that make up an NBA regular season, the playoffs were not his best friend. While his scoring was just as good as ever, his teams would frequently rely on him too much and he never made it out of the first round.

His teams in Toronto, Orlando and Houston were incredibly talented, but never tasted playoff glory. Even in the quote he made above, his Magic were soundly beaten by an average of 20 pts./night for games 5-7.

So, can a player with 31 years on his rapidly aging body and under 10 pts./game last season, come back to lead the Pistons to at least the second round in 2010-11? It’s questionable whether a player with his injury history can last long enough to even see the court for a playoff game. What is not questionable is his desire to prove to the rest of the league that he can still play. Players that have made over $160 million in their career do not frequently sign for the league minimum.

If this same desire reflects on the court, the Pistons and Joe Dumars may have yet again stolen from the rest of the league from right under their nose.

Love him or hate him, Detroit Tigers and Red Wings owner Mike llitch is one of the greatest team owners in all of professional sports.  At 81, his passion to win championships is still as strong as it was decades ago.   Fans may disagree with some of his moves; they may be dismayed by his ever-rising ticket prices; they may be turned off by the strong-armed tactics of holding security deposits too long and charging an arm and a leg for post season events — but they can never question the burning desire the man has to win.

Can you imagine if William Clay Ford had announced that HE was interested in buying the Detroit Pistons?  Can you begin to imagine to public outcry?  Accurate public perception is that Ford has been holding the once-proud Detroit Lions hostage for 47 years.  Unlike the excitement stirred by Ilitch’s announcement, a similar announcement by Ford would have potentially caused demonstrations in the streets.

Mr. I, for the record, I’m rooting for you.  I haven’t always agreed with your decisions; I haven’t always liked the management and player moves you’ve made; I strongly disagreed with you on the handling of Tiger Stadium.  But this time, I’m behind you all the way.  Good luck.

For wealthy sports franchise owners and their families, the Estate Tax is truly the death nell for keeping a team within the family. For Karen Davidson, this tax has forced her to look at all avenues in order to keep her family’s finances afloat. In New York City, the Steinbrenner family would normally go through what the Davidson family is going for, except for a 2010 loophole that could potentially allow the family to keep the team with relatively few penalties.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, the Sun is reporting that developers for a new stadium at the north end of the world-famous Strip are “in talks with an NBA franchise” in order to build an NBA-caliber arena. For a city that was heavily criticized by officials for the ruckus that resulted around the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, the NBA has demonstrated through the Summer League and the US Team Basketball Camp, that Las Vegas is an NBA city without a team.

So, what are the odds that the Pistons leave town? Following David Stern’s recent comments it seems that any team would have nearly free reign to move their team to a new location. Whether that team are the Pistons, the Sacramento Kings (Maloof properties all in one city?), or the New Orleans Hornets, you can bet that Sin City will open up its tables and venues for an NBA franchise to call its own.

The Pistons have known about their seventh pick for nearly two months, and never thought once to bring Monroe to the Palace for a physical or a venue tour. If you have hung onto any of your Pistons fandom following last season’s spend and lose debacle, it might be time to put your fan safety deposit box to use. This pick screams of a pending trade, and Joe Dumars needs to do something pretty drastic to get the ship righted for 2011.

I have a unique perspective on Greg Monroe having watched him and despised the uniform he placed on for two years. There’s something significant about being the Georgetown center, and Monroe always played like he had those weights on his back. He was tabbed as the freshman of the year in the Big East, an ominous honor in a year when Georgetown had one of its worst seasons in years. I would not be shocked to see him struggle in the NBA as size doesn’t always mean success when heading to the pro league.

With a team being built around players like Stuckey, Gordon, Villanueva, Jerebko, Maxiell and now Monroe, the Pistons will look to gain the most value out of their last prized blue chip – Tayshaun Prince. The former Kentucky product, and perhaps Richard Hamilton, are the only remaining pieces that might bring anything in return to Detroit. It’s clear that the last season came out of the blue and hopefully the Pistons will realize that one more season in the dumps can devastate a loyal fan base in a tough economy.

As mentioned in previous blogs, I went to Syracuse, and my legendary basketball coach of choice – Jim Boeheim – has 829 wins or 73 from Bobby Knight’s all-time total. In a recent interview he did around his 800th win, he mentioned that he had received an offer to coach the Atlanta Hawks (same team that offered Izzo a contract in 2000) in the early ’80s. This was a revelation to Orange fans who had considered Boeheim a Syracuse-lifer. Boeheim has also had a great deal of run-ins with the media, but he always calls out the media member to their face, not hiding behind blanket statements.

What I’m trying to get at is that accountability should no longer be a word used in the home locker room at the Breslin Center. During his conveniently timed press conference, Izzo and MSU brass put the blame on the media for inappropriately handling their roles over the past two weeks. Izzo’s rambling speech quickly turned from celebratory to accusatory towards media and those who thought he would leave. Nobody asked Izzo to point and lecture media while he was running a youth camp. Nobody told Izzo to stay silent until his primetime news conference.

I can’t help but think what these latest moves did for a lot of us once-neutral fans that respected Izzo for the work he has done with the Spartans. With his recent actions it is hard to separate the coach from the personality, from the team. There’s no doubt that college basketball season will heal all wounds, but until then, Cavs and Spartans fans will weight the consequences of one person’s actions.

The LeBron James saga is a real horse vs. cart saga. Do you get the big name coach to bring in the big name players? Do you get the biggest player in the game to get the coach who seemingly would never leave one of the most solid jobs in the college game? What happens if instead of LeBron James in the starting lineup for the team, it’s Joe Johnson? For the countless number of Spartans fans that occupy this great state, the thought of having their demigod go to a professional team seems like the end of an era for Spartans basketball.

If I’m Tom Izzo, I give the “thanks, but no thanks” to Michigan’s Dan Gilbert and stay at MSU. Izzo is essentially assured a lifetime contract at State with a $3 million/year deal in his hands. Unless he has totally lost his passion on the recruiting trail, or has a great desire to coach an NBA superstar, then he must make the move. I would like to think that an annual salary like that, combined with the adoring fans in East Lansing, would be enough pull to keep the star coach in East Lansing along with the power of basketball in the Great Lakes State.

In 1966 the teams that placed last in their division, had the first two picks with the order determined by a coin flip. The New York Knicks and Detroit Pistons were hungry to win the toss so they could select U of M’s Cazzie Russell who was the unanimous 1966 College Player of the Year.

During his spectacular varsity seasons from 1963-’64 to 1965-’66, three time All American Cazzie Russell lead the Wolverines to Big Ten titles each year and two Final Four appearances which included a heartbreaking loss to John Wooden’s UCLA team in the 1965 championship game. ( Russell still holds school records for the highest career scoring average (27.1 points) and the highest scoring average for a season. (30.77 points in ’65-’66).

Piston player-coach Dave DeBusschere called tails, but the coin turned out heads.

Had he won the toss, Dave Bing would not be the Mayor of Detroit.

The Knicks drafted Russell as expected and the Pistons chose Dave Bing, the Syracuse guard who was fifth in the nation in scoring and Syracuse’s first consensus All-American in 39 years.

As it turned out, even though Cazzie Russell was one of the greatest college players of all time, his NBA career paled in comparison to Dave Bing’s.

During a 12 year NBA career, that included a world championship with the Knicks in 1970, Russell averaged 15.1 points per game with New York, Golden State, the Lakers, and Bulls. However Dave Bing would become the NBA rookie of the year, lead the league in scoring in his second season and go on to become a Hall of Famer. In 1996, he was named one of the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players.
The small number of fans who supported the Pistons at Cobo Arena after Bing’s arrival marveled at number 21’s skills as he flew to the basket. After a score, the house announcer would say, “B-I-N-G-O!”
After retiring from the NBA, Russell served one year as a CBS basketball analyst, spent nine years coaching in the Continental Basketball Association and worked two years as an assistant with the Atlanta Hawks and spent over twelve years as the head basketball coach at tiny Savannah (Ga.) College of Art and Design.

Meanwhile, as we all know Dave Bing went on to become a successful businessman in Detroit with Bing Steel, and then in 2009 took on the unenviable task of running Detroit.

So what if Detroit doesn’t win the lottery pick in June. You just never know what you might end up with.

Much like the Lions winning in Week 17 a few years back, this team also tanked a good draft pick with victories in four of their final six. How does a team go from losing 11 in a row to winning road games in Philadelphia and Miami? While the team could be commended for not giving up and playing to the finish, they have left the Pistons in a dire position to get a franchise changing player in the draft. They need to get some lottery luck or trade up to end in the enviable top three.

The five years, $95 million committed to the Charlie Villanueva/Ben Gordon combination was a tremendous waste. They started a combined 33 games this past season, while averaging roughly 25 points between the two of them. There’s no reason to expect that a player like LeBron James or Dwyane Wade would have taken that same money to come to this team, but it would take some tremendous efforts over the coming years to justify these deals. The Pistons will likely have to go the trade route this offseason to get younger and better for the future.

With Karen Davidson in charge and looking to dump the team quickly, the future is as uncertain as it has been in a generation at the helm of the Pistons. Davidson’s right hand man, Tom Wilson, is spearheading the Ilitch franchise to a likely move to the Palace. Joe Dumars lost his own right hand man, John Hammond, to the playoff-bound Bucks a couple years ago. Concern is inevitable for this franchise with a rich past and a waning fan base. If Dumars is to show his real genius, this offseason is his moment.

This time I’d like to talk about a local sports legend that I encountered but once; yet that meeting and interplay left me with an experience that — like many with Sparky — I will never forget. 

I worked at a Detroit TV station in the 1980s, and had been charged once with writing and producing a series of Olympic Moments to be locally taped and run during that station’s telecast of the 1988 Olympics.  Oddly, the stars of those “Moments” were Sparky and Piston star Isiah Thomas — an odd pairing that I had been ordered to “make work” as they appeared together in a series of taped spots.  The station specifically had a big interest in seeing Isiah bloom on-camera; they had recently signed him to a big contract to do special projects work.  I had “handled” a variety of non-TV types in the past for the station (Dick Purtan of radio fame; Sparky himself; Count Scary, a vampire) and was instructed by the station Boss to make a TV star of Isiah.  The execs felt he had great broadcast potential, and Isiah had indicated a terrific wish, an “athlete’s desire” to succeed on camera.  My job, as hammered home by the Boss, was to take him under my wing, and coach him to stardom.

“Believe me,” I was told repeatedly, “he wants to learn.  He wants someone to teach him the trade, and evaluate his performances on camera.  He WANTS you to be critical, and show him what he did right, or did wrong.  You’ve got to reach out to him … and help him.  He knows it’s the only way to improve.”

That sounded find with me.  I knew how facile Sparky could be on camera, and Thomas — from everything I’d seen of him – seemed to have great TV potential. 

So I prepared a series of 60-second Olympic informational vignettes, with Sparky and Isiah seated next to each other, under an Olympic logo, swapping clever lines I’d written on a teleprompter.  When the day came for our taping, we had well-wishers and station execs — including the big Boss — all over the studio.  “Have you talked with him about his performance?” the Boss asked me.  “Not yet,” I said, “since we haven’t started.”  The taping went pretty well.  Sparky was in a great mood — I thought he was helping Isiah feel at ease — and Isiah responded with quite a good performance as we shot about ten vignettes in an hour. 

Before the Boss left the studio — after an extended and pounding back-slapping farewell with Isiah — he again ordered me to ”…be SURE to take him aside and evaluate his performance when you finish.  He wants to KNOW how he did, good or bad.  We have a big investment here, and he needs you to coach him in this.” 

So we called it an afternoon; Sparky made a quick exit, the crew finally dispersed, and Isiah stood off to one side, filling a gym bag with some clothing.  Just the two of us were left in the studio, as I had intended for privacy’s sake.  I had been directing the taping all day, and felt comfortable enough by then to approach him casually and say … ”Isiah, I thought you did really well today.  You were a little nervous at the beginning, but that’s normal.  You played off Sparky real well … and if you work on keeping your eyes on-camera — I had to cut a couple times when you looked down — you should be really successful at TV work.  You have a lot of natural qualities.”

With that, there was a long and strange silence as he quietly continued to fill his bag.  Swinging it over his shoulder, he now looked up and leveled a stare right at me.  It was a blank, kind of malevolent, look … startling actually.  I felt like his stare was saying “Who are YOU to talk with ME?”  With that unchanging but challenging look on his face, he began to briskly walk right AT me.  I was shocked, and fell back as he brushed closely by … so fast and aggressively that if I hadn’t moved he would have hit me, maybe knocking me down.  Swear to God.  Never changing expression, or saying a word, he continued his determined pace across the floor, and marched out of the studio.

So much for my coaching and advice.  As the door swung open behind him, I actually let out a laugh … a big laugh, probably one of shock, but also surprise and relief.  To this day, I have never been treated SO coldly, so menacingly, or so … one hesitates to say it … hatefully in my life.  By anybody, much less an NBA star.  His behavior was so bizarre, and so aggressive, so nasty … that it was actually entertaining. (And as a writer, it’s my job to collect “entertaining.”)  And I still have no idea why he did that, though I’ve heard stories from others of similar behavior and treatment by him. 

The big Boss asked me the next day if I’d had my talk with Isiah.  Yeah, I said … although it was kind of one-sided.  “Well, he WANTS to learn!  Did you help him learn?” he demanded.  Yeah, I said.  I didn’t know if HE had learned anything … but man, I sure did.