10 Best Rivalries in Detroit Sports History
By Zac Snyder
Detroit Pistons vs. Boston Celtics
Teams don’t get a chance to grow together much these days and it can be difficult to keep a championship team together. That wasn’t the case a generation ago when player movement was less common and deeper rivalries were a result.
The Bad Boys had no problem developing bad blood with the rest of the NBA and that was no different with the Boston Celtics. In the 1980s, the Pistons were a team on the rise while the Celtics were the established team in the East.
After bowing out of the playoffs at the hands of the Celtics in ’85 and ’87, the Pistons broke through to return the favor in the 1988 Eastern Conference Finals. The ’88 Finals ended in bitter disappointment but the Bad Boy Pistons finally got their World Championship in 1989 with a playoff run that started with a first round sweep of the Celtics.
The Pistons knocked out the Celtics again in the 1991 playoffs but just as the guard had changed from the Celtics to the Pistons in the late 80s, the ’91 playoffs saw power shift again as the Chicago Bulls knocked out the Pistons.
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