He was the sullen Piston—at times a
scowling player, even before there was anything to scowl about, as there has
been aplenty lately.
He was the one with arms like
Stretch Armstrong and shoulders like a men’s store hanger. He had the babiest
of hooks and a left-handed jump shot that had the rotation of a knuckleball and
the trajectory of a soft line drive.
Tayshaun Prince didn’t smile much
as a Piston. He was, at the same time, the team’s best on-ball defender and a
recluse. He was the Garbo of the Pistons. You didn’t dare go to battle without
him, yet he was as overlooked as a valley.
In the most recent salad days of
Pistons basketball—the championship of 2004 and the near-miss the following
year—Prince was content to be the Piston in the shadows of the satellites
around him.
Chauncey Billups, the point guard
and unquestioned leader. Richard “Rip” Hamilton, the beanpole sharp shooter
with the big smile and the “Yes sir!” rallying cry. Rasheed Wallace, the
brooding hot head. Ben Wallace, he of the ‘Fro and the biceps, who if he played
baseball would be known as a “good field, no hit” kind of player.
These were the four satellites, and
then there was Prince, the quiet kid from Kentucky, with arms so long they
looked like they could swat a basketball away near the rim, even if he was
standing at the foul line.
Prince was content to let the
others take all the glory—certainly content to let them talk into the
microphones and look into the TV cameras that invaded the Pistons locker room
every night.
When the four satellites made the
All-Star team in 2006, Prince was the only one of the five Pistons starters to
stay home that weekend. And that was OK.
Prince didn’t only play small
forward, he played small ego. He showed up for work, punched the clock, and
when the work day was over, he had his 13 points, his six rebounds, his two
steals and a blocked shot. You’d have been hard pressed to recall any of it.
A Billups triple, as the shot clock
expired? Check. A Hamilton jump shot off a screen to cap a 10-2 run? Check. A
Rasheed Wallace technical foul? Check. A Ben Wallace blocked shot to turn the
tide? Check.
All of that, you could recall. But
any of Prince’s points, rebounds, assists, etc.? Not so much.
Then one by one the rest of the
party was traded. Prince was the last of the 2004-05 powerhouse Pistons team
remaining, once Hamilton was jettisoned a couple years ago.
Suddenly the team looked to Prince
for divine wisdom. Suddenly he was the elder statesman. The media went to
Prince on those nights—and there were many as the Pistons sunk into the
abyss—when they needed the answers to the age old question, asked of the
losers: “Hey, what happened?”
Prince told it like it was, the
sewage unwashed from it.
But what Tayshaun Prince wasn’t,
really, at any time in his 10+ years in Detroit, was the heart and soul of the
Pistons. It wasn’t his fault.
Prince didn’t have the brashness of
a Bill Laimbeer or Rasheed Wallace. He didn’t have the flair for the dramatic
of an Isiah Thomas or Chauncey Billups. Prince didn’t have the smile of a John
Salley or Rip Hamilton.
Some have said, as the obits of his
Pistons career are being written this week following his trade to Memphis, that
Prince could be compared to the man who engineered the swap, which was one of
those three-team affairs that happen when two teams can’t come to terms and
need a third accomplice to make everyone happy.
Joe Dumars—the player from McNeese
State, it has been written, is the man you could most closely compare Tayshaun
Prince to, in terms of his team value, personality and wisdom.
It says here that the comparison is
a broken one.
Dumars was, often, the Pistons’
silent assassin. Dumars’ offensive contributions were not stealth. They didn’t
sneak up on you. The stat sheet at the end of the game rarely surprised you
when looking next to Dumars’ name. Joe Dumars may have been less than verbose,
but his game spoke volumes.
The images, we can close our eyes
and see now. The images of Dumars, bouncing the basketball, 20 feet from the
hoop, as he sized up his moves. The shot clock winding down, and then there it
was—a simple step back to create the six inches of separation he needed from
his defender, so he could launch (and drain) a silky smooth set shot.
Or Dumars, curling to the ball off
a screen, the basketball delivered with precision from Thomas at the elbow of
the key, and No. 4’s effortless catch-and-release—a pretty 17-foot jumper that
did nothing but tickle twine.
Who can forget Dumars’ performance
in the 1989 NBA Finals against the Lakers, when he was the series MVP? Or his
rainmaking floater in the lane against Portland in the ’90 Finals, delivered
when everyone on his team knew that Joe Dumars’ father had just passed
away—everyone except Dumars himself?
Prince was quiet, and that was the
best comparison to Dumars. But Prince played his game in a vacuum on most
nights. His stat sheet was filled with numbers that made you ask, “When did those
happen?”
This is not a knock on Tayshaun
Prince, who frankly might be one of the last of the true small forwards in the
NBA—certainly based on the time that he entered the league, in 2002. He slashed
and passed and could shoot from the outside, when needed.
But he was no Joe Dumars. Again,
not a knock.
Prince had his block of Reggie
Miller in the 2004 Conference Finals. That’s true. It is certainly an iconic
moment for the Pistons franchise. Some say Prince lived off it for too long,
but was he the one who kept playing it time and again? Did he inundate us with re-telling
of the block? Was the block the only thing that kept him in the starting lineup
for years to come?
No to all of the above.
Prince plays in Memphis now. The
Grizzlies are a team that is among the best in the Western Conference. Prince
will return to the playoffs, four years after his last appearance in the
post-season. Maybe Memphis can surprise and do some damage in the playoffs.
Maybe Prince can be that “X-factor” that the media loves to talk
about—something Prince was in the 2003 playoffs, coming off Rick Carlisle’s
bench as a rookie.
It might seem strange to see Prince
in a Memphis uniform, after 10+ years as a Piston. But when you look back at
his time in Detroit, did we really see him as a Piston?
Prince was present, but he wasn’t there.
And that’s OK, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment