The Palace of Auburn Hills: Bad Boys and Three Rings

Just off the interstate in Auburn Hills stood an arena that, for nearly three decades, was the house where Detroit's toughest basketball team made its home. The Palace of Auburn Hills opened in nineteen eighty-eight, and its timing was almost impossibly fortunate.

The Detroit Pistons of the late nineteen eighties were called the Bad Boys, and the name fit. Led by point guard Isiah Thomas, center Bill Laimbeer, defensive demon Dennis Rodman, and the quietly devastating Joe Dumars, this team played with a physical ferocity that drove opponents and television commentators to near-hysteria. They fouled hard, played defense at a level few NBA teams have matched before or since, and embraced the villain role with evident enthusiasm. They were also, by any honest measure, extraordinarily good.

In their first full season at the Palace, they won the nineteen eighty-nine NBA Championship, sweeping the Los Angeles Lakers four games to zero, with Joe Dumars winning the Finals MVP. Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls had stood in their way for three straight playoff runs; the Pistons had beaten them each time. They repeated as champions in nineteen ninety, with Isiah Thomas finally earning Finals MVP honors. Back-to-back championships in the first two full seasons of a brand-new arena.

A decade and a half later, a completely different Pistons team brought a third title to the Palace. The two thousand four club, coached by Larry Brown and built around Chauncey Billups, Ben Wallace, Tayshaun Prince, and Richard Hamilton, had no superstar but perhaps the best defensive system in the league. They defeated Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant's Los Angeles Lakers four games to one in what ranks among the great upsets in NBA Finals history. Billups was named MVP.

The Pistons left for downtown Detroit's Little Caesars Arena in twenty seventeen. The Palace was demolished on July eleventh, twenty twenty. Three championships in twenty-nine years. The wrecking ball earned.