Wallace Says ’04 Pistons Would Beat ‘the St’ Out of ’17 Warriors originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
The 2017 Warriors weren’t honest.
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 the greatest basketball teams ever assembled at 16-1 throughout the 2017 NBA Finals. .
However, Rasheed Wallace, a four-time retired NBA All-Star and member of the 2004 title-winning Detroit Pistons, believes he and his old team would fool the Warriors in a hypothetical game.
“We have an NBA record that will never be broken,” Wallace said Thursday on the “Sheed & Tyler show,” presented by Underdog NBA. “We held six or seven teams under 70 points. In this scoring era, that was never going to happen.” broken again. We were the defense, we hung our hat on the defense.
“We would have beaten them to the punch. I’m going to address that because… Draymond [Green] said this bulls-t recently on his and Shaq’s podcast. We would have beaten them for the simple fact that they couldn’t match us in any position.”
“We would have beat the hell out of them for the simple fact that they couldn’t match us in any position…Steph [Curry] no defender. He should be guarding Rip [Hamilton]…Draymond [Green] is too little…”
Sheed says the ’04 Pistons SMOKE the ’17 Warriors pic.twitter.com/gGAwn7EaIc
— Rasheed Wallace (@UnderdogSheed) May 30, 2024
“Defense” was Detroit’s pride and joy with its roster 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 2003-04 regular season match – an unthinkable feat in today’s competition.
However, Detroit averaged just 90.1 points per game that season. Golden State, on the other hand, averaged a league-high 115.9 points per game during the 2016-17 NBA regular season and had three players (Curry, Durant and Thompson) average over 20 points per night.
The two teams come from two completely different eras, but the ’17 Warriors definitely had more star power than the ’04 Pistons. Still, Wallace was adamant that Golden State would be outmatched in almost every area.
“Steph is not a defender,” Wallace added. “He should be guarding Rip. How many screens came off Rip? Or whoever they would have tried to attack, they would have been too small for Chauncey. .. I say KD couldn’t guard Tayshaun at the time – Tayshaun was an underrated scorer…
“They’re not used to the physicality. Draymond is too small. [The rules] does not matter. Under the new rules they can’t work with us either because we have more guys with more skills.”
Wallace’s position doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon, as is the likely outcome of the hypothetical Warriors-Pistons matchup.
Golden State would be heavily favored if Wallace’s dream scenario existed.
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