When the Atlanta Hawks suited up four players for the 2015 NBA All-Star Game last season, it marked just the third time in nine years an NBA team had accomplished such a feat.
One of the last squads to make it happen? That’d be your 2006 Detroit Pistons, who took it upon themselves to re-introduce the idea of defense to an exhibition game typically front-loaded with uncontested dunk.
By the mid-point of the 2005-2006 campaign, the Pistons were off to a blazing openly act under Flip Saunders, in his first year at the helm in Detroit. Hitting the All-Star Break with a 42-9 record (including a 37-5 start), Detroit’s personnel seemed primed to finally earn some hefty recognition, particularly after their NBA championship run in 2004 and a return to the Finals in 2005.
The Pistons’ sustained excellence paid off as four players — Rasheed Wallace, Ben Wallace, Chauncey Billups, and Richard Hamilton — got the nod to join an Eastern Conference All-Star team coached by Saunders. All but one of the Pistons’ starters were accounted for, though they yearned for their missing brethren.
“I wish Tayshaun (Prince) would be there,” Hamilton said. “If that would have happened, that would have been incredible because it hasn’t happened before. But it will be incredible to be there with those guys and if Flip plays us all at the same time that will be even more exciting.”
Come All-Star Sunday, true to form, all four Pistons representatives checked in as a collective unit. With Saunders using Boston Celtics forward Paul Pierce as a Tayshaun Prince substitute, the Pistons began to gain their wits about them late in the third quarter, leaving a very distinctive imprint on a game typically personified by lackadaisical defense and wild open floor dunks.
In familiar fashion, four-time Defensive Player of the Year Ben Wallace set the tone by twice blocking the shot of Memphis Grizzlies forward Pau Gasol, inducing a 24-second violation — a rarity in All-Star competition.
After Chauncey Billups tied the contest with a three-point play early in the fourth quarter, the Pistons n’ Pierce combo embarked on an extended stretch of, well, Pistons basketball. Successful defensive rotations, frantic closeouts on shooters and sustained effort led to numerous turnovers and near 24-second shot clock violations (again, this is an All-Star game) that led to a fertile stream of transition Pistons layups and jumpers.
By the time the Pistons’ All-Star run was all said and done, the East had re-gained a lead they’d never again relinquish. Prompting unusual news headlines such as “LeBron and the Pistons Lead East to All-Star game win“, the Detroit Pistons had succeeded in executing a hostile takeover of the 2006 All-Star Game, and it was awesome.
