Vision Circle

Detroit Basketball

I'm a professor. I'm a parent of four. I'm a husband. Why the hell does Detroit's championship matter, above and beyond the fact that I'm from Detroit?

I've been reading ESPN's Page 2 while working on a paper about The Green Mile...trying to conjure Ralph Wiley up. And I run across a column by The Sports Guy.

While Wiley was my MAN (it still hurts like a bitch that he's gone, and I suspect it will for sometime), I don't really like Simmons that much for one reason--he can't stand Isiah Thomas. And if I'm a fan (short for fanatic) about any sports figure it's Zeke. But check it. While figuring out exactly why he missed the boat on the '04 Pistons, Simmons goes back to an interview Thomas had with Dan Patrick while checking out the '88 Lakers/Pistons series...the series Thomas put up 25 on a bum ankle, only to lose the series on a phantom call against Laimbeer. Thomas had never seen the game on tape, and while watching it damn near ten years later he starts to cry. Patrick gives him a second, then asks him what seeing thet tape brings up. This is a part of Thomas' response as written by Simmons:

"You know, like you said, to see Dennis, the way Dennis was, to see Vinny, to see Joe, to see Bill, to see Chuck, and to know what we all went through and what we were fighting for ... I mean, we weren't the Lakers, we weren't the Celtics, we were just, we were nobody. We were the Detroit Pistons, trying to make our way through the league, trying to fight and earn some turf, you know, and make people realize that we were a good team. We just weren't the thing that they had made us."

Patrick steps in: "You weren't Showtime, you weren't the Celts, you were the team that nobody gave credit to."

"Yeah," Isiah says, nodding. Now he knows. He knows what to say.

"And seeing that, and feeling that, and going through all that emotion, I mean, as a player, that's what you play for. That's the feeling you want to have. When 12 men come together like that, you know...

I think Simmons is channelling Wiley now because he's never written anything this poignant.

That feeling of being alone against the world, with only a few good men to stand against the hordes, is one of the things that drives me to do what I do. And to look for likeminded individuals. Often I turn back to my grandfather's example, my father's example, the example of my fraternity brothers. But often I turn back to Isiah...and to the Pistons. They represent the modern day spirit of Invictus. Detroit...WHAT!

That's why I care.