- [Narrator] Well, this game is over.
It's March 26th, 2007 and we're in Detroit,
where fans are already headed for the exits
because with just over a second remaining,
the Pistons trail the visiting Denver Nuggets
by three points.
The Nuggets have possession and just need to inbound
to end this game with a road victory.
Before these 1.5 seconds elapse,
we should see what this result will mean
for two teams having difficult transition years
and, I don't know, maybe game out the very, very,
very slight chance that this leads to something weird.
Let's rewind.
For the Pistons, the stakes aren't terribly high here.
It's late in the regular season
and they've got the best record in the Eastern Conference,
that's been the expectation this decade.
Detroit has consistently finished at
or near the top of the East and they ran all the way
to an NBA championship in 2004.
With the playoffs fast approaching,
these Pistons are on track to contend yet again,
but look around the floor and you'll see these aren't
the same old Pistons, there's someone missing.
To understand why, begin with the coach.
This isn't Larry Brown who coached the Pistons
to that '04 title, it's Flip Saunders who took over
after Brown and the Pistons had
a sudden unfriendly divorce in 2005.
In season one under Coach Saunders,
the Pistons posted their best ever NBA record
and survived a grueling second round series
against rising star LeBron James
and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Only the retooled Miami Heat could stop the Pistons
in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Not a bad first season for Coach Saunders,
but this is Detroit, merely reaching
the Eastern Conference Finals constituted
a step back from '04 and '05
and it wasn't just that Detroit failed to win the East,
it was how they lost and the personnel involved.
Brown's Pistons drew a claim for their offensive balance.
Unlike their rivals, each headlined by a star or two,
Detroit had a core four of Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton,
Tayshaun Prince, and Ben Wallace,
and the addition of Rasheed Wallace made it five.
Sheed's long and illustrious Hawks career reached its end
with an '04 deadline trade to Detroit,
the key final ingredient of a champion.
None of these guys was known
as the clear cut offensive star.
That said, the Detroit offense
at the time wasn't particularly, you know, good.
Brown's Pistons won big by defending
and while everyone chipped in to that defensive excellence,
Detroit had a pretty obvious centerpiece
on that side of the floor, the center, Ben Wallace.
Undrafted, undersized, yet unrelentingly tough,
the four time defensive player
of the year became Detroit's most recognizable,
most beloved face.
The incredibly rare superstar who cultivated fame
and renowned without scoring.
Big Ben is among the greatest ever at hustling,
rebounding, and protecting the rim,
but genuinely inept with the ball in his hands,
a perfect embodiment of what made
the Larry Brown Piston such a unique champion.
Well, Flip Saunders is not Larry Brown.
Last season, Saunders employed a similar rotation
to his predecessor, but extracted from it
a much more efficient offense.
Detroit moved the ball better, they attempted more threes
and they won even more, although not always happily.
Ben Wallace wasn't quite as comfortable with this new coach
and he expressed as much, refusing to check in
to a game late last season.
That tension only strained during
the '06 Conference Final loss to Miami
when Flip diminished the role of Detroit's biggest star.
Gradually at first and then all at once.
Saunders benched Wallace for the entire fourth quarter
of the decisive Game 6 defeat.
Big Ben was not pleased and his displeasure percolated
at a critical juncture, unrestricted free agency.
This past summer, Detroit's fan favorite superstar,
spurned the Pistons to sign with the division rival,
Chicago Bulls, citing his rift with Coach Saunders
as one reason for the change
and while the Pistons have stayed winners without Big Ben,
Coach Flip isn't done battling Wallaces.
If Ben Wallace was the defensive heart
of the champion Pistons, Rasheed Wallace was,
I don't know, their offensive mouth?
Sheed's creative talent, defensive versatility, his verve,
his confidence, his cheer, his overall Sheedness,
felt like the key ingredient that made those Pistons
a champion, not just a contender.
So excellent, so instrumental was Rasheed Wallace
that a stern coach like Larry Brown could tolerate
some of the eccentricity Sheed also brought to the table.
Well, that part isn't going so hot with Brown's successor.
Just like the recently departed Wallace,
this Wallace has bristled at Coach Saunders and vice versa.
Sheed's tendency to walk away from huddles,
his penchant for technical fouls,
and his occasional late arrival to practice,
they're all familiar habits, but not to Saunders.
Wallace rode the bench for some crunch time this season
and even lost his starting spot for a couple games.
Sheed just served a league suspension
because he racked up too many technicals.
All this was enough for ESPN reporter Chris Sheridan
to describe the relationship between coach and star as "hate,"
which led to Wallace screaming at Chris Sheridan.
So let's sum it up.
The Pistons really aren't the Pistons anymore
in terms of personnel, but they're still the best team
in the East, still a hopeful contender
to outlast the Cavs, Bulls, and Heat
and maybe even the best of the West come playoff time.
But, doing the above might require a little more harmony
than they've experienced of late.
For now, this loss isn't gonna be the end of the world.
This matters a lot more to Denver, the likely victor.
In fact, you can tell Denver coach,
George Karl, is extra desperate
because when the Nuggets got possession,
he called timeout to draw up a play,
up three points with under two seconds remaining.
Totally unnecessary, but it's not unlike Karl
to keep coaching right up to the buzzer,
for better and worse.
At Madison Square Garden in December,
Denver had themselves a win even more guaranteed
than this one.
The Nuggets led the Knicks by 17 points
with under two minutes to play.
Knick's coach, Isiah Thomas, waved the white flag
and commenced garbage time by benching his best players.
Karl, for whatever reason, did not follow suit.
With nothing left to play for,
their victory of foregone conclusion,
Karl let four Nugget starters keep playing,
including Denver centerpiece slash NBA leading scorer,
Carmelo Anthony.
Coach Thomas took that Nuggets lineup as an affront
and called for an intentional hard foul,
which led to a fight, which led to Melo getting
a 15-game suspension of what was shaping up
to be his best season.
That was a huge blow to a perfectionist coach,
to a young player trying to enter the upper echelon,
and to a franchise looking to improve
on last season's division win,
and the surprise twists kept coming.
Almost immediately after that fight
during the multi-week absence of their superstar,
Denver made a very important trade,
acquiring another one of the league's best
and most ball dominant scorers, Alan Iverson.
Iverson gave Denver enough juice to tread water
during Carmelo Anthony's absence,
but Melo returned in late January
and the Nuggets haven't quite coalesced since.
They dipped below 500 for parts of February and March,
a period that included a horrid loss
to these Pistons earlier this month.
An Iverson-Melo pairing, risks nights like tonight.
The Nuggets will win this game in spite
of their two superstars, both Iverson and Melo shot poorly
and they've committed seven combined turnovers.
Denver holds the edge tonight thanks to their depth.
J.R. Smith blazing off the bench,
the Marcus Camby-Nene front court tandem healthy
and productive at the same time, that's all great,
but yeah, this situation remains novel and unsettled.
One superstar who sat for a month,
another who arrived in the interim,
a very intriguing pairing that still hasn't won much
and all of this stems, at least in part,
from Coach Karl's reluctance to ease off the gas
in an already decided game back in December.
So now, the Nuggets need every win they can get,
which I guess is why Karl,
still reluctant to ease off the gas,
just called a timeout to prolong this distinct,
but also seemingly already decided game.
Unusual choice, maybe overthinking things, but whatever.
The Nuggets just need to get the ball in,
watch time expire, and go home with a nice victory.
This pass isn't looking very clean,
but it's not like it really matters with so little time.
Oh, hmm.
Okay, well, so I just realized who's standing right here.
One thing, real quick, just in case.
So super long shots at the final buzzer have gone in before
like the '04 Pistons had a famous one of their own.
Julius Erving beat the Mavericks in '86
with a shot from beyond half court,
but the Sixers got to inbound the ball themselves
on that one.
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf did the same thing for Denver
a few years later, but he had much more time to dribble
and line up his shot than the Pistons would here
if they somehow get the ball.
So this is different.
If this little poke jars the ball free,
Detroit would have to get a steal, turn around,
and fire a game tying attempt of, I don't know,
60 feet in about one second.
That is basically impossible, it's like a trick shot,
but this right here is Rasheed Wallace.
We know he's great, we know he's a champion,
and we know he's a little grouchy sometimes,
but what we haven't yet mentioned is
that Sheed is the NBA's King of Trick Shots.
Perhaps more than anyone else in, I don't know,
the history of pro basketball?
Rasheed Wallace practices absurd and difficult shots.
We recently got to see behind the scenes film of this.
Sheed can hit threes with both hands at the same time,
he can score from behind the backboard,
he can thread the ball onto this super narrow carriage
of a ball rack,
and he can hit from pretty incredible distance
and it's not just idle practice time.
Before a game when you're supposed to, you know,
warm up for the game, Sheed will do something like this,
the rare shoot around moment worthy of Sports Center,
note the left hand.
- [Announcer] ... probably gonna shoot during the game.
Rasheed Wallace one right, one left.
- [Narrator] Even during a game itself,
Sheed might bust out something silly.
Here he is attempting a lefty three-pointer
for no reason at all.
This is a competitive game in its third quarter with plenty
of time on the shot clock.
Sheed just felt like pulling a trick out of the bag
and he air balled it.
So, I don't know, it almost certainly doesn't matter,
but I just felt compelled to point that out.
If you had to pick one person on the planet
to take an impossible circus shot,
it might very well be this guy standing inches away
from a developing turnover.
This game is all, but decided.
Up three with about a second left,
this strange new Nugget squad should be able to grab
a much, much needed win off the best team in the East.
Albeit one that's undergone some pretty big changes
of its own and not always happily.
If this goes the way it should, it's just a regular game.
If something weird happens, then, well,
welcome to a moment in history.
- [Announcer 2] And Rasheed from long range.
Woah. - [Announcer 3] Yes, yes!
= [Announcer 2] Woah. - [Announcer 3] Yes, yes!
(electric outro music)