If Michael Jordan’s dominance was born out of torment, then the “Bad Boys” Detroit Pistons were his recurring nightmare.
That is until he broke them in the 1991 playoffs.
But before Jordan pounded Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer, Dennis Rodman, and yes, Scott Hastings, leading to the infamous “walkoff” that signaled the end of the Pistons’ run, they knocked Jordan’s block off.
Three straight times, from 1988-90, the Pistons ousted Jordan’s Bulls from the playoffs. Over that time, as unveiled in ESPN’s riveting “The Last Dance” documentary that peels back the layers of Jordan’s reign, the Pistons helped build a monster.
“The Game 7 (1990 Eastern Conference Finals), when we beat them, they weren’t ready yet mentally,” said Hastings, a member of the 1990 title-winning Pistons before finishing his career with the Nuggets. “They got right the next year, by far. When I go back and look, and you saw a little bit of it in episode four, the first three games were close. A break here or there, we could’ve won a game in Chicago and maybe won that Game 3 at home, but once they got up 3-0, man, it was done.”
So was Detroit’s unapologetic run atop the NBA. Hastings, who played his college ball at Arkansas, had a relationship with Scottie Pippen, who went to Central Arkansas. It’s why, after Chicago’s four-game sweep of Detroit, Hastings was on the court congratulating the Bulls after they’d finally broke through and not ducking handshakes like Thomas and Laimbeer had done.
“I was out there and I hugged and congratulated them,” Hastings said. “I don’t remember if I ever congratulated Michael or hugged him, but, you know, what’s he want from an 11th man on the team?
“… I think the walkoff is more, we didn’t even talk about it in the locker room,” he added. “The locker room was more about, that was the end. You did get a sense that that run with the Pistons was over.”
Still, Hastings relished his two years with the Bad Boys and the bruising imprint they left on the league. He fondly recalled the physical practices – fights broke out often – and the way in which Detroit’s nasty frontcourt protected its star guards.
“I remember my first or second day of practice, in training camp, Laimbeer took myself and David Greenwood out for dinner and it was like a scene straight out of ‘The Untouchables,’ and he was Sean Connery,” he said. “Basically, laying down the law. ‘Our guards run the team. No one touches our guards. If someone knocks our guards down we put their guards out of the game.’ That type of lecture.”
Hastings can draw a direct lineage from that environment to today’s Nuggets, where Michael Malone, the son of then-Pistons assistant Brendan Malone, sometimes coaches with the same passion that those Pistons played with. It was a cherished era of gritty basketball, where teams didn’t like each other and fraternizing with opponents was discouraged.
There’s also no surprise that the documentary has opened Pandora’s Box of basketball debates.
“This reaffirms to me, watching this, why I go with (MJ) as the greatest player of all time because we tried to punish him,” Hastings said. “When I say ‘we,’ I’m not just saying the Pistons. The Knicks and the Sixers and the Celtics and the Hawks. Everybody, when you played him, you tried to physically pound him. And he still was able to do what he did under those circumstances.”
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NBA Journal: “Bad Boy” Scott Hastings on Michael Jordan’s Bulls, “The Last Dance” and Pistons’ infamous walkoff - The Denver Post
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