{"id":500654,"date":"2025-12-28T07:13:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T07:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/500654\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T07:13:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T07:13:14","slug":"with-most-championship-teams-you-can-name-one-or-two-star-players-isiah-thomas-raved-about-bad-boy-pistons-identity-and-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/500654\/","title":{"rendered":"“With most championship teams, you can name one or two star players” – Isiah Thomas raved about Bad Boy Pistons’ identity and culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Isiah Thomas<\/a>\u00a0believed that the last Detroit Pistons team that won the NBA championship resonated with the Bad Boys. For Zeke, the 2004 Pistons upheld the identity and culture that the Bad Boys built back in the ’80s.<\/p>\n

According to Thomas, the makeup of that team reminded him of the Bad Boys. No individual star player outshone his teammates just like how they were back then.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Zeke even pointed out that being cohesive and collective are the traits that separated the Pistons from other successful teams. For Thomas, this is exactly the reason why many fans consistently recognize the Pistons’ championship teams as a unit, rather than for their individual stars.<\/p>\n

“When you look at Chauncey (Billups), Rip (Hamilton) and Sheed (Wallace), none of them had been as successful with other organizations or as appreciated in other organizations and cities until they got to Detroit,”\u00a0Zeke\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0The Detroit News in 2020.\u00a0“You can make the argument that Chauncey’s career was on the downside before he got to Detroit. Sheed was heading down before he came to Detroit from Portland and Atlanta. Those types of players are what we’re about in terms of making a team.”<\/p>\n

“Thirty-plus years later after the Bad Boys, people across the country can still name the eighth, ninth and 10th man on the team,”\u00a0he emphasized.\u00a0“With most championship teams, you can name one or two star players. Everyone wanted to be individuals, but we prided ourselves on being a team. People rattle off the names of our 7-8-9 men like they were part of the starting five, which is great.”<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

The Bad Boys’ impact goes beyond the court<\/p>\n

Thomas has been known for taking great pride in being part of the Bad Boy\u00a0Pistons<\/a>. The legendary point guard loves the idea that the Pistons not only captured a specific market within the NBA community but also outside the sport.<\/p>\n

Zeke is convinced that even non-sports fans gravitated toward the Bad Boys for representing the majority of the masses. In fact, Isiah believed that the Bad Boy Pistons had also\u00a0significantly impacted pop culture<\/a>, which was something other successful NBA teams failed to accomplish.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

“We represented the underclass, and the Lakers and the Celtics represented the upperclass of the basketball society; they were royalty,”\u00a0Thomas\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0Slam in 2014.\u00a0“We had a cast of characters on our team that were the underdogs. You look back now and there’s been two Bad Boys films and a company called Bad Boy. We definitely left our mark.”<\/p>\n

Related: “I would come home to a 76,000-square-foot house with nobody there but me” \u2013 The time when Shaquille O’Neal had to sell his Florida mansion 60 percent under the price<\/a><\/p>\n

How could the Pistons revive their culture?<\/p>\n

It has been several years since the Pistons last had a solid identity and rich culture as a team. They have been trying to rebuild for quite some time now, but it’s safe to say that their efforts have yet to translate to significant success.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Perhaps Thomas is right. Historically, the Pistons were at the top of the food chain when they stuck to the principles of their culture. That being said, the current Pistons could possibly get back to their winning ways if they could manage to build a squad the Bad Boy way, which is without an individual star taking over, and everybody on the team is on the same page.<\/p>\n

Related: Byron Scott reveals the worst player he had to coach: “Just getting him to practice was like pulling teeth”<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Basketball Network<\/a> on Dec 28, 2025, where it first appeared in the Old School<\/a> section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Isiah Thomas\u00a0believed that the last Detroit Pistons team that won the NBA championship resonated with the Bad Boys.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[31733,7,296,188,3860,2036,6,3220,297,55367],"class_list":{"0":"post-500654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-pistons","8":"tag-bad-boy-pistons","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-detroit","11":"tag-detroit-pistons","12":"tag-detroitpistons","13":"tag-isiah-thomas","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-nba-championship","16":"tag-pistons","17":"tag-the-bad-boys"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115795958421779090","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}