King Kaufman's Sports Daily

You had become the Gene Mauch of basketball, widely acknowledged as a strategic genius and with nary a title to your name. (I know about the NCAA crown at Kansas. Minor leagues.) Funny how creative non-winning gets so much more respect than multiple championships. People often say Phil Jackson has won so many times because he's had so many years with a pair of transcendent players, even though, oddly, not one of those superstars he's coached to nine titles has ever won a championship for another coach.

But you changed your ways when you went to Detroit, Larry, you really did. The Pistons were the best team you ever took over, the first time you've ever taken the reins of a team with a winning record. Your charge this time wasn't to make the club respectable but to win a championship. You did it, and you did it in a way I didn't think we'd ever see you do anything: quietly.

Oh, you still yelled a lot. I don't mean that. What I mean is this series was refreshingly devoid of spectacular coaching gambits. You put the long-armed Tayshaun Prince on Kobe Bryant, which worked beautifully, but I think most coaches would have given that a try. And that was about it. The rest of the coaching job you did was mostly done before the Finals started.

You created an atmosphere in which the players on your roster could work together and get the most out of their talents. That's how championships are won. Not once did you put five guards or three power forwards on the floor or have your center play the point. It was a spectacularly unspectacular performance, one that, looking at the first three decades of your coaching career, I did not think you were capable of.

I was wrong about that. I apologize.

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Detroit? Riots? Perish the thought! [PERMALINK]

A few sensitive Michiganders wrote in after I joked Tuesday that given Detroit's status as a world leader in post-victory rioting, Detroit police should encourage marijuana use to calm the crowds, in imitation of a policy used by the Lisbon, Portugal, authorities to keep English soccer fans from getting too rowdy at Euro 2004 this week.

Since the 1984 rioting that followed the Tigers World Series victory, they uniformly informed me, the Pistons had won two championships and the Red Wings three without any civil disturbance. Detroit had turned over a new leaf since '84, and I owed the now peaceful city an apology for branding it a world leader in championship rioting.

Jimmy Kimmel had a show pulled off the air by ABC last week and was forced to apologize for a similar joke about Detroit -- not as funny, but he doesn't have this column's team of writers.

But I don't have to placate an angry Detroit affiliate, so no apology here.

The 1984 riots alone qualified Detroit as a world leader. And just because Detroit's defenders seem to have forgotten the deadliest post-championship celebration of them all, which followed the Pistons' victory in 1990, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Seven people were killed and hundreds injured. If that's peaceful, I'd hate to see a riot.

The celebration in Detroit Tuesday night was reported to be as orderly as it was jubilant. There couldn't have been better news.

Previous column: Marijuana! Stat!

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