Should take sometime to summarize what this was.

It happend in 94/95 in Hills 2nd year. The prior years after the bboys we won something like 21 and then 27 games with no offense and a swiss cheese defense. The 21 is what got us the 3rd pick when we selected Hill.

The 1st year of Teal is when Doug Collins came in who actually was the 1st coach since Chuck Daly to emhasis defense. Collins drafted shot blocking Theo Ratliff and traded for Otis Thorpe. Collins loved Hunter and often had issues with Allen Houston for his lack of Defense.

For the 1st 2 seasons the Teal Pistons were actually more about defense but lacked the talent to advance in the tough Eastern Conf. They won 46 and 54 games for that stretch.

The following season is what we most associate with the Teal era. Bison Dele was signed and Ratiff was traded for Stack. Prior to the trade points were few and far inbetween but we lost our interior defense when Ratliff was traded and Thorpe soon followed over some internal disputes with Collins.

After Collins left ( was fired mid-season ) is when Teal got its soft reputation. The softest was the 2nd to last year in 99-00 when the team fielded Mills and Laetner as the starting frontcourt and the main strategy was simply to outscore the opponent. The team finished .500 and was swept in the 1st round.

Teal was not about any particular style of play or philosophy and certainly was not about trying to outscore the oppenent - thats just the way it ended. Poor management, bad coaching and all around bad decisions is what gave Teal its bad name. The "New Look ( Teal ) Pistons" was no comment on how they played - it was just how they looked. A marketting ploy to sell more jerseys and nothing more.

Its still fun to look at the final years of Teal on how not to play.

Also here is one for the strange but true category. Rick Mahorn the baddest of the bad boys wore Teal. Mahorn came back for a final season in 95/96 wearing a Teal uniform for the Pistons and was able to finish his career as a Piston which was pretty cool.

Great summary Max.

Its also important to note that the Teal era brought us the horse in our logo as well as Hooper the mascot. All of which have been removed from the organization with the exception of Hooper.

It's time to replace Hooper. I think your avatar would be a fitting mascot.

I remember Thorpe being a reliable inside presence for the couple of years that we had him, which had really been lacking during the teal era. I think he had some conflict with Doug Collins that led to him being traded. Does anyone remember what we got back back for him? I hope it was something good, because Thorpe was a nice player. Anyway, the trade was way back in 1997, so it probably has no relevance now.

ha..ha.. You might be right. I think I will be replacing my Jackass Davidson avatar soon though to reflect a more "positive" attitude. I'm not one to be down in the dumps for too long.

It was a 7' serbian gangster, I think he's playing in Orlando now...

Oh right, that guy we dumped to clear cap space to keep the team together. So I guess it all worked out in the end.

Yep, years of looking forward to that pick and all we got was Kelvin Cato and extra cap space.

I'm not very excited about Joe D lately, but I have to give him some credit for taking the Darko pick which didn't work out, and parlaying it along with a late pick in this year's weak draft into a possible lottery pick in next year's very, very deep draft.

As far as correcting a misstep, that's a very good move.

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."