Wallace Claims ’04 Pistons Would ‘Beat’ ’17 Warriors originally appeared in NBC Sports Bay Area
The 2017 Warriors weren’t fair.
Going 16-1 throughout the 2017 NBA Finals, Golden State – with a starting lineup of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green and Zaza Pachulia – will forever be remembered as one of basketball’s greatest teams. already assembled. .
However, Rasheed Wallace, a retired four-time NBA All-Star and member of the 2004 title-winning Detroit Pistons, believes he and his former team would make fools of the Warriors. in a hypothetical confrontation.
“We have an NBA record that will never be broken,” Wallace said Thursday on the “Sheed & Tyler Show,” presented by Underdog NBA. “We kept six or seven teams under 70 points. broken again. We were on defense, we hung our hat on defense.
“We would have beaten them up. I’m going to address this because… Draymond [Green] said this the other day on his and Shaq’s podcast. We would have given them a beating for the simple fact that they could not match us in any position.”
“We would have beaten them up for the simple fact that they couldn’t match us in any position… Steph [Curry] not a defender. He would have to protect Rip [Hamilton]…Draymond [Green] is very little…”
Sheed says the ’04 Pistons SMOKED the ’17 Warriors pic.twitter.com/gGAwn7EaIc
-Rasheed Wallace (@UnderdogSheed) May 30, 2024
“Defense” was Detroit’s pride and joy with its cast led by Chauncey Billups, Richard “Rip” Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace.
En route to a 4-1 victory over retired greats Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2004 NBA Finals, the Pistons held teams to just 84.3 points per game during the 2003 regular season- 04. an unthinkable feat in today’s league.
However, Detroit averaged just 90.1 points per game that season. Golden State, comparatively, averaged a league-leading 115.9 points per game during the 2016-17 NBA regular season and had three players (Curry, Durant and Thompson) average north of 20 points per night.
The two teams are from two completely different eras, but the ’17 Warriors definitely had more star power than the ’04 Pistons. Still, Wallace was adamant about Golden State losing in virtually every area.
“Steph is not a defender,” Wallace added. “He would have to protect Rip. .. I’m saying, back then, KD couldn’t guard Tayshaun – Tayshaun was an underrated scorer…
“They’re not used to physicality. Draymond is very small. [The rules] it doesn’t matter. Under the new rules, they can’t play with us either because we have more guys with a bigger skill set.”
Wallace’s position does not appear to be changing anytime soon, as the likely outcome the hypothetical warriors-Combination of pistons.
Golden State would be heavily favored if Wallace’s dream scenario existed.
