October 31, 1950: The NBA's 1st Black Player

Earl Lloyd

October 31, 1950, 75 years ago: The Rochester Royals defeat the Washington Capitols, 78-70, at the Edgerton Park Arena in Rochester. (It was demolished in the late 1950s.) Arnie Risen scores 20 for the home team, as they begin a season that will bring their 1st NBA Championship.

They had previously won the title in the National Basketball League in 1945. They will become the Cincinnati Royals in 1957, the Kansas City Kings in 1972, and the Sacramento Kings in 1985. Their long-term future in Sacramento is now settled, as they've opened a new arena.

Earl Lloyd, a forward wearing Number 11, scores 2 baskets and 2 free throws for the Capitols, for a total of 6 points. It doesn't sound like much, but his mere presence in the game makes him the NBA's 1st black player.

Chuck Cooper had been the 1st black player drafted, by the Boston Celtics. But, the way the schedule worked out, Earl beat him to the court by 1 day. Chuck should not be confused with another early black star, Charles "Tarzan" Cooper, who played for the New York Renaissance (a.k.a. the Rens) in the 1930s. 

Chuck Cooper

Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton, formerly of the Rens and the Harlem Globetrotters, had been the 1st black player actually signed to a contract, by the New York Knicks, but Earl beat him to the court by 4 days. So, in a way, the NBA had 3 "Jackie Robinsons."

Nat Clifton

Earl Lloyd was born on April 3, 1928 in Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. His hometown team, having fired coach Red Auerbach in 1949, was 10-25 on January 9, 1951, and folded, leaving the nation's capital without an NBA team for the next 22 years. Lloyd was then drafted, and served in the Korean War.

Discharged in 1952, "the Big Cat" (also the nickname of Baseball Hall-of-Famer Johnny Mize, then wrapping up his career with the Yankees) played for the Syracuse Nationals until 1958, and the Detroit Pistons from then until his retirement in 1960. He averaged 8.4 points per game in his 9 NBA seasons. The Pistons then hired him as a scout.

In 1968, they named him the 1st black assistant coach in the NBA. In 1972, they named him the 2nd black head coach, after Bill Russell of the Celtics, and the 1st non-playing black head coach. But the Pistons were awful then, and his career coaching record was just 22-55.

He worked for the Detroit school system, helping students find jobs, then did the same thing for a company run by Pistons Hall-of-Famer Dave Bing. He retired to Tennessee. In 2003, the Basketball Hall of Fame elected him as a "contributor," for his historical prominence.

In 2007, T.C. Williams High School, the integrated Alexandria school into which his former all-black school, Parker-Gray, had been consolidated (a tale told, with considerable dramatic license taken, in the football-themed film Remember the Titans), named their new gym's court after him. He was also elected to the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame, and died on February 26, 2015, a few weeks short of his 87th birthday.

March 1, 1965: The Moynihan Report

March 1, 1965, 60 years ago: The Moynihan Report is released, although that is not its title, and the name "Moynihan" doesn't appear anywhere on it. That's the name that it got, because some people insist upon assigning credit, while others insist upon assigning blame.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan may have seemed like the most Irish of New Yorkers, but he was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1927, before moving to Hell's Kitchen on Manhattan's West Side with his family as a boy. He worked as a longshoreman before getting a free education at City College of New York, then serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and getting a Ph.D. in history from Tufts University, in the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts.

"Pat" went to the London School of Economics, where he began to cultivate, in his own words, "a taste for Savile Row suits, rococo conversational riffs and Churchillian oratory," even as he maintained that "nothing and no one at LSE ever disposed me to be anything but a New York Democrat who had some friends who worked on the docks and drank beer after work."

He worked on the staff of New York Governor W. Averell Harriman, an old-money Democrat, before being appointed an Assistant Secretary of Labor under President John F. Kennedy. The night that JFK was assassinated, he spoke with Mary McGrory of The Washington Star, invoking the heritage of both of them, and also that of the fallen President: "There's no point in being Irish if you don't know that the world will break your heart eventually."

He remained under the new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, who wanted the Department of Labor to give him as much information as he could for his "War On Poverty." The result was The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, published on March 1, 1965. Moynihan wrote the report on his own initiative, hoping to persuade White House officials that civil-rights legislation, alone, would not produce racial equality. Few people doubted this.

But Moynihan didn't suggest an additional solution, only an additional subject to address: Black families. He pointed out that the out-of-wedlock birthrate was much higher for black people than for white people. And he used the phrase "tangle of pathologies" to describe conditions within black families.

Conservatives loved it: Only 5 months after their epic electoral defeat at LBJ's hands, here was a lifeline, and it was coming from inside their enemy's own house: Not just a sub-Cabinet official, but a man who was respected by both JFK and LBJ. The report seemed to back up their idea that spending money on achieving racial equality shouldn't be done, giving them the justification that it was pointless.

Liberals hated it: The report seemed to "blame the victim" for his own problems. This presaged later conservative "dog whistles," like "race hustler," "poverty pimp," "welfare queen," and "superpredator."

Between the backlash against this report, and LBJ's perception that Moynihan was too close to his intraparty rival, JFK's brother, now-Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, Moynihan realized that his position in the Johnson Administration was untenable. Before the year was out, he resigned to take a professor's position at Harvard University.

But the Republicans remembered. In 1969, the new President, Richard Nixon, appointed Moynihan to be Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy; and, later in the year, as Counselor to the President. (He would be succeeded in these offices by John Ehrlichman and Donald Rumsfeld, respectively.)

But his support for a guaranteed national income, or a "negative income tax," was too close to socialism for Tricky Dick and his tricksters. At the end of 1970, he left the Administration, and went back to Harvard. In 1973, Nixon appointed him to be U.S. Ambassador to India. In 1975, President Gerald Ford appointed him U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In 1976, despite still officially living in Massachusetts, he ran for the U.S. Senate from New York, for the seat formerly held by RFK, and won it.

He would serve 4 terms, becoming, as I eventually put it, in language that wouldn't go over well today, "a political transvestite." He was reliably Democratic on education, the environment, civil liberties and abortion, and was a reliable vote for federal judges appointed by Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. But he seemed to side with the Republicans on taxes, and absolutely sided with them on health care and welfare.

During the health care reform debate in early 1994, he was the Chairman of the Senate's Committee on Finance, which had to approve any reform bill. Clinton had been pushing for universal coverage, saying there was a crisis on the issue. But the Republicans were saying there wasn't any crisis. In other words, the Republicans were lying.

Moynihan appeared as a guest on NBC's Meet the Press, hosted by a former aide of his, Tim Russert, and said, as if he were a Republican, "We don't have a health care crisis in this country. But we do have a welfare crisis." Russert asked him if there would be a new health care reform law. Moynihan said, "Ah, in this Congress? No." By refusing to even consider holding hearings in the Finance Committee on such a bill, he did as much to kill health care reform for the next 16 years as any conservative, in Congress or in the media.

Clinton did sign a welfare reform bill in 1996, after vetoing 2 others he thought too draconian, vetoes that Moynihan criticized on the Senate floor. But, as someone with more days dealing with medical difficulties than days at work between 1994 and 2010, I have never forgiven Moynihan -- or the Republicans -- for killing health care reform, offering it as a sacrifice to the god of welfare reform.

Moynihan continued to officially be a Democrat, while taking some Republican positions, until, bowing to advancing age, he retired in advance of the 2000 election. His seat was won by Hillary Clinton, Bill's wife. She had been careful to get on good terms with him, despite the fact that the health care reform movement was as much her pet project as it was her husband's. So Hillary winning Moynihan's seat must have given both Clintons satisfaction on more than one level.

Moynihan died in 2003. In 2021, something for which he had long advocated and attempted to fund, an expansion of New York's Pennsylvania Station, opened in the former main post office across 8th Avenue. Designed to handle Amtrak traffic, so that the station between 8th and 7th Avenues could handle New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road more easily, the new facility was named Moynihan Train Hall.

When this honor was offered to him during his lifetime, Moynihan said he didn't want it, saying the building should continue to carry the name it had, honoring James A. Farley, an old-line New York Democrat whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt had named Postmaster General, and who had gotten the building built. Farley died in 1976, the last survivor of FDR's Cabinet (the position is no longer Cabinet-level), and had been pretty much forgotten by people younger than Moynihan and his fans.

If anything, the commuter portion of Penn Station should have been named for Moynihan, given how often he commuted between America's 2 main political parties.

November 19, 2004: The Malice at The Palace

November 19, 2004, 20 years ago: The most notorious brawl in the history of North American sports breaks out. In the tradition of giving rhyming names to big prizefights, it quickly became known as "The Malice at the Palace." 

The Detroit Pistons were playing the Indiana Pacers, at The Palace of Auburn Hills. Auburn Hills is in the suburbs of Detroit, 33 miles northwest of Cadillac Square, and far from the city's notorious ghettos. The Pistons had been playing there since 1988, after playing the previous 10 seasons at the Silverdome, 4 miles to the south in Pontiac.

They were the defending NBA Champions, and had previously won back-to-back titles in 1989 and '90, when they were the roughest team of their generation, "the Motor City Bad Boys." A member of that team, Joe Dumars, was now the general manager, and he had assembled a strong team, coached by Larry Brown. Having coached the University of Kansas to the National Championship in 1988, Brown became the 1st coach to win both NCAA and NBA Championships. Through 2022, he remains the only one.

The Pistons' starting center and Captain was Ben Wallace. Forward Rasheed Wallace (no relation) was considered the most aggressive member of the team. He had been acquired from the Portland Trail Blazers, who, at the time, were not only very aggressive on the court, but got into legal trouble off it, leading to the nickname "the Jail Blazers."

The team also included guards Chauncey Billups, Richard "Rip" Hamilton and Lindsey Hunter; forwards Antonio McDyess and Tayshaun Prince; and newly-acquired center Derrick Coleman, once on the verge of superstardom with the New Jersey Nets, but had worn out his welcome with 4 different teams, and was trying a comeback with his hometown team.

The Pacers were coached by Rick Carlisle, the coach that Dumars fired in order to get Brown. Their general manager was Larry Bird, an Indiana native who led the Boston Celtics to 3 NBA titles, including in 1986 with Carlisle as a bench player. They were led by guard Reggie Miller, one of the greatest shooters in NBA history, but he was injured, and did not play in this game. Their next-most-notable player was a forward known for his bad behavior, Ronald William Artest Jr., then using the name Ron Artest.

There wasn't much history between the Pistons and the Pacers. They were in the same Division, in adjoining States, but the Pistons had always considered the Chicago Bulls and the Cleveland Cavaliers to be their biggest rivals. The Pacers also considered the Bulls to be their rivals, and, to a lesser extent, due to a pair of difficult Playoff series between them, the New York Knicks.

They had played each other in the 1st Round in 1990, and, although this was the height of the Pistons' Bad Boys era, there were no incidents. In 2004, they played each other in the Conference Finals, so they were very familiar with each other by the following November; but in that May series, there were no incidents.

ESPN televised the game nationally, which helped embed the incident in fans' minds more than ESPN just replaying it endlessly on SportsCenter and its other shows could have done. By the 2nd quarter, the Pacers had jumped out to a 20-point lead, and the game never got close. Artest ended up scoring 20 points for the Pacers, and Jermaine O'Neal had 20. Hamilton scored 20 to lead the Pistons.

With 46 seconds left in regulation, the Pacers were up 97-82. Ben Wallace attempted a layup, but Artest slapped him on the back of the head. (Note: As Rasheed, despite his reputation, was not one of the principals in the brawl, hereafter, when I say, "Wallace," I mean, Ben.) Wallace shoved Artest in the face. Both benches emptied, with Prince being the only player not to get up.

The officials separated them, and, at first, that looked like the end of it. If it had been, the incident would have been chalked up as just another end-of-game scuffle involving a frustrated player on a losing team and a player on a winning team who should have left well enough alone.

Donnie Walsh, president of the Pacers organization, had told Artest that, to calm down and avoid trouble in a volatile situation, he should walk off the court, and lay down on the scorer's table. Whether the people at that table, or the Pistons, or the officials knew about this, I don't know. If that had been the end of it, it might have been chalked up as the kind of weird thing that some athletes did, such as Artest's contemporaries, baseball star Manny Ramirez and football star Terrell Owens.

But Wallace escalated the situation, throwing a towel at Artest. Artest got up to retaliate, but was held back by Pacer coaches. Then, a spectator, later identified as John Green, threw a plastic cup with soda in it at Artest, hitting him in the chest. Artest went into the stands, and grabbed the man he thought responsible, yelling, "Did you do it?" But it was the wrong fan, identified as Michael Ryan, who said, "No, man, no!"

Pacers broadcaster Mark Boyle tried to hold Artest back, but Artest knocked him backwards and stepped on him, resulting in 5 fractured vertebrae. Boyle was the only person Artest ever apologized to over the incident.

Another fan, William Paulson, threw another drink in Artest's face, while Artest was restrained. The Pacers' Stephen Jackson went into the stands and punched Paulson in the face. Players on both sides, including Miller and Rasheed Wallace, and even Pistons broadcaster Rick Mahorn, known in his playing days as the "baddest" of the Bad Boys, went into the stands to get their own players out. When the situation is so bad that Rick Mahorn is trying to ply peacemaker, that's historically bad.

Somehow, Green, the initial drink-thrower, got to Artest, and twice punched him in the back of the head. Artest was finally led out. But 2 fans who had gotten onto the court, Alvin Shackleford and Charlie Haddad, got in Artest's face, and Artest punched Shackleford in the face. Anthony Johnson of the Pacers punched Haddad. O'Neal did the same. Coleman, in a mature act that would have surprised Nets fans 10 years earlier, stood by Larry Brown and the Pistons' ball boy to protect them.

NBA Commissioner David Stern remembered watching all of this on television, and saying, "Holy shit." O'Neal later said, "As bad as it looked on TV, it was at least 20 times worse in person."

The referees and the Auburn Hills police cleared the court. With the Pacers leading by 15 with 45.9 seconds on the clock, the referees declared the game over. The Piston fans threw more objects at the Pacers as they left the court for their locker room, including a steel folding chair that nearly hit O'Neal. Brown took the public address announcer's microphone, and told the fans to stop. They didn't. He threw the microphone down. Nine fans were injured, 2 seriously enough to be taken to a hospital.

It still wasn't over. O'Neal yelled at Carlisle for making the coaches restrain players who were only trying to defend themselves, and was ready to fight him.

The next day, the NBA suspended Artest, Jackson, O'Neal and Ben Wallace indefinitely. When the punishments were finalized, Artest was suspended without pay for the rest of the season, which, counting the Pacers' Playoff games, amounted to 86 games. It remains the longest suspension for an on-court incident in NBA history. He lost almost $5 million in pay.

For the Pacers: Jackson was suspended 30 games, O'Neal 15, Johnson 5, Miller 1. For the Pistons: Ben Wallace was suspended 6 games, and Billups, Coleman and Elden Campbell were each suspended 1. A 1-game suspension is standard for a player who leaves the bench during a brawl, but is usually not applied if it can be shown that the player was trying to break the fight up.

In criminal court, Artest, Jackson, O'Neal and Harrison were sentenced to 1 year on probation, 60 hours of community service, $250 fines, and anger management counseling. Johnson was sentenced to 100 hours of community service.

Green, Haddad and Shackleford were banned for life from attending any future events at The Palace. So were Bryant Jackson, identified as the fan who threw the folding chair at O'Neal; and David Wallace, no relation to Ben or Rasheed, who was sentenced to one year of probation and community service for punching Pacer player Fred Jones.

Green and Haddad had season tickets, which were revoked, with refunds for the cost of the remainder of the season. Green had a rap sheet longer than a 3-point shot, and was already on probation from a DUI conviction. He was acquitted of the assault charge for throwing the cup, but convicted for punching Artest in the stands. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and 2 years' probation. Jackson pleaded no contest to a felony assault charge, and was sentenced to 2 years' probation.

The brawl had no long-term effect on the Pistons, as they returned to the NBA Finals in 2005, but lost in 7 games to the San Antonio Spurs. They have not been back since. In 2017, the Pistons and the NHL's Detroit Red Wings moved into the Little Caesars Arena, at the northern edge of downtown, a short walk from Comerica Park, the new home of MLB's Detroit Tigers, and Ford Field, the new home of the NFL's Detroit Lions. And so, for the 1st time since the Lions last played at Tiger Stadium on Thanksgiving Day 1974, 43 years earlier, all 4 of Detroit's major league sports teams were playing in the city.

Rick Carlisle remained the Pistons' coach until 2007. He coached the Dallas Mavericks for 13 seasons, winning the NBA Championship in 2011. The Pacers have not been a serious NBA title contender since 2004.

The Palace was also the site of a brawl between the WNBA's Detroit Shock and Los Angeles Sparks on July 22, 2008. This fight was dubbed "The Malice at the Palace II." The Sparks won the game, 84-81. Despite winning WNBA Championships in 2003, '06  and '08 -- hence the mailing address of The Palace was "Six Championship Drive," having previously been "One... " and counting upward -- the Shock moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2010. The Shock moved again in 2016, becoming the Dallas Wings.

Without a tenant, The Palace became most useful for the suburban land on which it stood. It was demolished in 2020, after only 32 years. General Motors bought the land, and is planning to build an electric-car assembly plant on the site.

After bouncing around the league, in 2010, Ron Artest won an NBA Championship with the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2011, to help improve his image, he legally changed his name to Metta World Peace. He explained that "Metta" is a Buddhist word that means "loving kindness and friendliness towards all." In 2020, having married Maya Sandiford, he changed his name again, to Metta Sandiford-Artest. He now runs The Artest Management Group, which helps athletes with real-life issues, including tax preparation. He seems to have found peace, if not world peace.

His son, who goes by Ron Artest III, has also played pro basketball, for two teams in the National Basketball League of Canada.

June 15, 2004: Larry Brown's "Double" Shocks the L.A. "Superteam"

Left to right: Larry Brown, Rip Hamilton,

Ben Wallace, Chauncey Billups, Rasheed Wallace

June 15, 2004, 20 years ago: The NBA Championship is awarded to the best team in the league. Not the best collection of players, but the best team.

From 1972 to 2010, Larry Brown coached 10 different ABA or NBA teams (a record), and also coached 3 different college basketball teams. He took UCLA to the 1980 NCAA Final, and the University of Kansas to the Final Four in 1986 and 1988, winning the National Championship in 1988.

Brown was from Long Island, New York. As a teenager, he was a camp counselor there, and one of his students was Tony Kornheiser, later a great sportswriter and, with Michael Wilbon, co-host of the ESPN show Pardon the Interruption. A lifelong friendship was formed.

Here's how Kornheiser once described Brown's genius for coaching: "He took the Clippers to the Playoffs! Nobody takes the Clippers to the Playoffs!" From 1976, when the Los Angeles Clippers were still known as the Buffalo Braves, until 2012, when a change in management made them a perennial Playoff team, the only coaches to take them to the Playoffs were Larry Brown in 1992 and 1993, Bill Fitch in 1997, and Mike Dunleavy in 2006. That's it: 4 times, and Brown provided 2 of them.

And it wasn't just the Clippers: He took the NBA's other "little brother team," the New Jersey Nets, to the Playoffs in 1982. That was the good news. The bad news is that he never seemed to stay in one place too long. He either didn't like the job, or he angered somebody in management. But somebody was always willing to hire him. He got the Denver Nuggets to the last ABA Finals in 1976, and the Western Conference Finals in 1978; the Indiana Pacers to the Eastern Conference Finals in 1993 and 1994; and the Philadelphia 76ers to the NBA Finals in 2001.

But Brown and the Sixers' top player, Allen Iverson, couldn't co-exist. So, in 2003, Brown resigned, and took the head job with the Detroit Pistons. Despite this, in 2005, Iverson admitted, "I love him as a man. The coach, that's totally different. Yeah, I like him as a coach. He's the best coach in the world. I can't say it enough. He's the best in the world."

Joe Dumars, the guard who had led the Pistons' defense in their "Motor City Bad Boys" period -- losing the Finals to the Lakers in 7 games in 1988, then winning back-to-back titles in 1989 and 1990 -- was now the general manager. He had built a team with guards Chauncey Billups, Richard "Rip" Hamilton and Lindsey Hunter; forwards Rasheed Wallace, Tayshaun Prince and Corliss Williamson; and center Ben Wallace.

The Pistons beat the Milwaukee Bucks in the 1st round of the Playoffs, the New Jersey Nets in the next round, and the Indiana Pacers in the Conference Finals. Now, the NBA Finals were in front of them. Standing between them and glory: The Los Angeles Lakers.

Coached by Phil Jackson, and led by center Shaquille O'Neal and guard Kobe Bryant, the Lakers had won 3 straight NBA Championships: 2000, 2001 and 2002. There had been discussion of the Lakers getting favorable, but incorrect, calls from referees, especially in the Playoffs.

In 2003, the Lakers lost to the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Semifinals. Their general manager, former Laker forward Mitch Kupchak, was determined to get the title back. He decided to build a "superteam." He signed 3 free agents: Karl Malone, who built a career as one of the all-time great power forwards with the Utah Jazz; Gary Payton, who had been a superstar point guard with the Seattle SuperSonics; and forward Horace Grant, who had helped Jackson win 3 titles as a forward with the Chicago Bulls, and teamed with O'Neal to get the Orlando Magic to the 1995 Finals.

Everything pointed to the Lakers going through the league like a hot knife through butter. But first, Bryant needed knee surgery in the off-season. He went to Colorado to get it. At his hotel, he was accused of sexually assaulting a female employee. The case was dropped, and, eventually, NBA fans decided, pretty much the way baseball fans did with David Ortiz and his steroid cheating, that it simply never happened, and that the man in question was a wonderful guy.

Eventually. But not in the 2003-04 season. Bryant heard it from fans all over the league, and he missed a few games. While the Lakers' record of 56-26 was enough to win the Pacific Division, it was not historically notable, and they only finished 2nd overall in the Western Conference to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

They knew they would truly be measured by what they did in the Playoffs, and they did raise their game: They beat the Houston Rockets in the 1st round, the Spurs in the next round, and the Timberwolves in the Western Conference Finals, to set up the Finals matchup with the Pistons.

Few people gave the Pistons the chance. The Lakers were considered a team of destiny. They forgot that a collection of players can be beaten by a team. The Pistons won Game 1 in Los Angeles, 87-75, despite 34 points from Shaq, and the basketball world was stunned. They pushed the Lakers to overtime in Game 2, with the Lakers winning 99-91, with Kobe scoring 33.

But getting a split in L.A. energized the Pistons. At The Palace in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, Michigan, the Lakers never had a chance. The Pistons won Game 3, 88-68. The Lakers were never in the game. Shaq had 36 points and 17 rebounds in Game 4. But Rasheed Wallace had 26, and he and Ben Wallace (no relation) each had 13 rebounds. The Pistons won, 88-80. Malone did not play in Game 5, and he retired after the Finals, so this was the last game for "The Mailman."

Game 5 was played at The Palace on June 15. The Pistons led 25-24 after the 1st quarter, but pulled away in the 2nd, pulled away further in the 3rd, and the Lakers simply couldn't come back. The Pistons won, 100-87, and the World Champions were, as the chant echoing through Auburn Hills said, "DEE-troit BAS-ket-BALL!"

The Pistons had done this despite not having a single player on their roster who was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame until Ben Wallace was elected in 2021. Billups was named the Most Valuable Player of the Finals. Brown finally had his 1st NBA Championship, as either a player or a coach, at the age of 63. (He had won the 1969 ABA Championship while playing for the Oakland Oaks.) He remains the only head coach to win championships in both the NCAA and the NBA.

The Lakers? They were now the biggest flop in NBA history -- or, at least, since their 1969 edition, when Wilt Chamberlain was added to Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and Gail Goodrich, and lost Game 7 of the Finals at home.

And after the season, Bryant told the team's owner, Dr. Jerry Buss, that he could no longer coexist with either O'Neal or Jackson. Jackson told Buss that Bryant was "uncoachable." So Buss told Kupchak to appease Bryant. He did: O'Neal was traded to the Miami Heat. And Jackson resigned.

With Bryant as "The Man," The Lakers fell apart. And Shaq, along with Dwyane Wade, helped the Miami Heat win the 2006 NBA Championship. In 2007, the Lakers got knocked out by the Phoenix Suns in the 1st round. Shaq was recorded rapping in a nightclub, saying, "Kobe, tell me how my ass taste!" (The implication was not that Kobe could kiss Shaq's ass, but that he already had.)

Sportswriter Dave Zirin wrote, "Kobe did to the Lakers what Jimmy Hoffa did to the Teamsters: Both made them a national force & ruined them forever." (Ironically, when Hoffa disappeared, it was in the northern suburbs of Detroit, at a restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, then Machus' Red Fox, now named Andiamo, just 14 miles from where The Palace would be built.)

Well, not forever, as it turned out. Shaq's teasing was the wakeup call that Bryant needed. He made peace with Jackson, who returned. The Lakers got Pau Gasol. Together, they got back to the Finals in 2008, and won the title in 2009 and 2010. Meanwhile, O'Neal never won another. The final total: Bryant 6 titles, O'Neal 5; separately, Kobe 2, Shaq 1.

Kobe and Shaq made peace with each other before Kobe's death in a helicopter crash in 2020.

October 19, 1963: The Philadelphia 76ers Debut

1963-77 Logo

October 19, 1963, 60 years ago: After 14 seasons as the Syracuse Nationals, the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers make their home debut, taking the place of the Philadelphia Warriors, who moved to San Francisco the year before. It doesn't go so well: Despite 31 points from Lee Shaffer and 24 from Chet "the Jet" Walker, they lose to the Detroit Pistons, 124-121 at the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center.

After bringing Wilt Chamberlain back from the Warriors in 1965, the 76ers built one of the greatest teams every in 1967, winning the NBA Championship. By 1973, they had collapsed, and finished with the worst record in NBA history, 9-73.

They rebuilt, and reached the NBA Finals in 1977, 1980 and 1982, before winning another title in 1983. But 2 disastrous trades in 1986 doomed them, and they've only reached the NBA Finals once since, in 2001. The last few years, they have asked their fans to "trust the process." Well, they're waiting.

They played at the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center through the 1967 title, then moved to The Spectrum in South Philadelphia. In 1996, they moved next-door to the arena currently named the Wells Fargo Center.

The Philadelphia Civic Center's Convention Hall

From their beginnings, the have retired the Number 4 of forward Dolph Schayes, who had starred for them in Syracuse. From their 1967 title team, coached by Alex Hannum with Dr. Jack Ramsay as their general manager, they have retired the 13 of center Wilt Chamberlain, the 15 of guard Hal Greer, and the 32 of forward Billy Cunningham.

From the 1983 title team, coached by Cunningham, with Pat Williams as general manager, they have retired the 2 of center Moses Malone, the 6 of Julius "Dr. J" Erving, the 10 of guard Maurice Cheeks, and the 24 of forward Bobby Jones. From the late 1980s and early 1990s, they have retired the 34 of forward Charles Barkley. From the 2001 Finalists, they have retired the 3 of guard Allen Iverson.

And, in place of a retired number, they have hung a banner with a picture of a microphone, in memory of Dave Zinkoff, the public address announcer for the Warriors from their founding 1946 until their move in 1962, and for the 76ers from their 1963 arrival until his death in 1985.

Phil Sellers, 1953-2023

The greatest of all Rutgers basketball players is no longer with us.

Phillip Sellers Jr. (no middle name) was born on November 20, 1953 in Brooklyn. He graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School there, and was recruited to play for Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey by Dick Vitale, an assistant to head coach Tom Young. He helped Rutgers reach the NIT in 1973 and 1974, and reach the NCAA Tournament in 1975.

Now, under coach Tom Young, they had a basketball team ready to challenge the rest of the country. The usual starting lineup was guards Mike Dabney and Eddie Jordan, forwards Phil "the Thrill" Sellers and Hollis Copeland, and center James Bailey, a freshman.

It was one thing to beat regional rivals like Princeton and Seton Hall (also in New Jersey); Columbia, Fordham, Manhattan College and Long Island University (New York City); the University of Pennsylvania and Temple (Philadelphia); Bucknell, Lehigh, Lafayette (Northeastern Pennsylvania); the University of Delaware; the Naval Academy (Maryland); American University (Washington, D.C.); the University of Connecticut; and Boston College.

But beating bigger teams was another thing. On December 4, 1975, they beat Big Ten team Purdue. Between Christmas and New Year's, they went to Greenville, South Carolina to play in the Poinsettia Classic, and beat The Citadel (not a big deal) and Georgia Tech (which was a big deal. They beat West Virginia at Madison Square Garden on February 5.

By this point, home games at the 3,200-seat College Avenue Gymnasium were next to impossible to get into unless you were a student. It got so loud, paint chips fell from the ceiling. The decision to build a new arena was made.

Rutgers beat the University of Pittsburgh, then Syracuse. On March 1, they closed the regular season at home to St. Bonaventure, still undefeated at 25-0. The Bonnies took an early lead, but the Scarlet Knights came back, and won, 85-80. They entered the ECAC Metro Tournament at Princeton's Jadwin Gymnasium, and beat LIU and St. John's, Queens and Brooklyn, to go 28-0.

It was on to the NCAA Tournament. This was only the 2nd time RU had made the Tournament, having gotten in the year before, and going out in the 1st Round. They had gotten to the Semifinals of the NIT in 1967, with future North Carolina State coach Jim Valvano playing for them.

They played Princeton -- not in New Jersey, but at the Providence Civic Center in Rhode Island. (It's now named the Dunkin' Donuts Center. It was the closest game of the season, but Rutgers beat their ancient rivals, 54-53.

On to the Regional Semifinal, in Greensboro. Connecticut was not yet the power it would become, and Rutgers won, 93-79. That led to the Regional Final, also in Greensboro, against VMI. This time, Rutgers was solidly favored, and won, 91-75. They were undefeated. They were 31-0. They were ranked Number 4 in the country. And they were on their way to the Final Four.

Since it was 1976, the Bicentennial year, the Final Four, and the All-Star Games for MLB, the NBA and the NHL, were held in Philadelphia. On March 27, against the University of Michigan, ranked Number 9 entering the Tournament, the bubble finally burst. The Wolverines jumped out to an early lead, and the Knights just couldn't get into their game. Michigan won, 86-70, and RU were 31-1.

In those days, there was a 3rd Place Game, and Rutgers lost that, too, 106-92 to defending National Champion UCLA, to finish 31-2. Indiana, coached by Bobby Knight, and featuring future NBA players Kent Benson, Scott May and Quinn Buckner, beat Michigan, and completed an undefeated season, 32-0. There hasn't been an undefeated season in college basketball since.

Calendar year 1976 was magical for Rutgers: In the Autumn, the football team also went undefeated, 11-0, but was not invited to a bowl game.

In 1977, Rutgers moved into the Rutgers Athletic Center, across the Raritan River, on the Livingston Campus in Piscataway. Now named the Jersey Mike's Arena, it only seats 9,000, and has never been very good. Plans for renovation, or for a new arena in downtown New Brunswick, have been floated, but it looks like the current nondescript chunk of concrete is going to stay. The College Avenue Gym still stands, and hosts the RU wrestling and volleyball programs.

Despite being the team's top player, Phil Sellers played just 1 season in the NBA, with the 1976-77 Detroit Pistons. Hollis Copeland played 2 seasons with the New York Knicks. James Bailey lasted 9 seasons, playing for both the Knicks and the New Jersey Nets, among other teams.

Eddie Jordan had the most successful pro career, playing 7 seasons, 3 of them with the Nets, and 3 with the Los Angeles Lakers, including winning the 1982 NBA Championship. He later coached the NBA's Sacramento Kings, Washington Wizards and Philadelphia 76ers.

After his release by Detroit, Sellers played for the Jersey Shore Bullets in the Continental Basketball Association (CBA), and then for BV Amstelveen in the Netherlands. He tried out for the Pistons again in 1979, then coached by his former assistant coach at Rutgers, Dick Vitale, but was cut before the season began. He returned to Rutgers as an assistant coach for four years in the 1980s, before moving to work in the private sector, and doing some fundraising for the University.

He remains Rutgers' all-time leader with 2,399 points and 1,115 rebounds. In 1988, the University retired his Number 12. In 1993, it inducted him into the Rutgers Athletics Hall of Fame. In 2010, he was inducted into the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame.

After a series of health setbacks, Phil Sellers died from a stroke yesterday, September 20, 2023, at the age of 69. Having been predeceased by his wife Pat, he was survived by son Phil Sellers Jr., daughter Kendra Sellers Palmer, and a granddaughter.

RU athletic director Pat Hobbs called him "a special player, and an even better person." Teammate Eddie Jordan said, "I will miss him with all my heart."

How to Be a New York Basketball Fan In Detroit -- 2021-22 Edition

The Brooklyn Nets will visit the Detroit Pistons this Friday night, November 5. The New York Nets will visit on December 29 and March 27.

Before You Go. The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press (or "Freep") websites should be consulted before you decide whether to go. While the game will be indoors, you will be spending some time outdoors.

A January 30, 2019 article in Thrillist said that Michigan was 2nd only to Minnesota in how bad Winter was -- noting that people in Alaska, which came in 3rd, were "different" and could handle what is obviously worse in terms of statistics: "Winter in Michigan begins well before Thanksgiving and stretches far past Easter, which makes for four-to-six wearisome months of always-gray, always-cold, always-drizzly, but-rarely-snowy-in-a-good-way misery.

It's early November, so temperatures are dropping. Friday afternoon is forecast to be in the high 40s, and Friday night in the mid-30.

I should also note that Detroit is a border city. The Detroit River, connecting Lakes Huron and Erie, is one of the few places where you can cross from north to south and go from America to Canada. Windsor, Ontario -- the closest thing there is to a "South Detroit," making that line in the Journey song "Don't Stop Believin'" problematic -- is considerably safer, and, like Detroit itself, has a gambling casino.

If you want to visit, you'll need to bring your passport. You can use either the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel or the Ambassador Bridge. At the moment, US$1.00 = C$1.24 and C$1.00 = US 81 cents.

Tickets. The Pistons played in the suburbs from 1978 to 2017, first in Pontiac, then from 1988 onward in Auburn Hills. The new arena and its closeness to downtown has helped attendance: The Pistons averaged 17,413 fans per home game last season, only 83 percent of the new arena's capacity, but up over 1,400 per game from the previous season. Tickets shouldn't be too hard to get, especially since the Red Wings are underway and doing well. So among the crimes you won't have to deal with, most likely, is ticket scalping.

In the Lower Level, seats are $160 between the baskets and $65 behind them. In the Upper Level, they're a bargain: $49 between the baskets, and $30 behind them.

Getting There. It is 616 miles from Madison Square Garden to the Little Caesars Arena. Knowing this, your first reaction is going to be to fly out there.

Except... Wayne County Metropolitan Airport is 22 miles southwest of downtown, on the opposite side of the city. A taxi to downtown will set you back a bundle. There is a bus, SMART (Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation) bus Number 125, that goes directly from the airport to downtown, but it will take an hour and 20 minutes.

You're better off renting a car at the airport, which is southwest of the city, and then driving to the arena, which is northwest of the city -- a whopping 50 miles. They didn't really think when putting the Palace and the Silverdome where they did, far from both downtown and the airport. Sure, it was safe, and it was where a huge part of the fanbase was. But it wasn't convenient for anybody living in any other part of the Detroit area, or fans coming to watch their teams there.

Do you remember the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza had a girlfriend, played by a pre-Will & Grace Megan Mullaly (using her real voice, you'd never recognize her as W&G's Karen), and he had to accompany her to a funeral in her hometown of Detroit? "It's kind of an expensive flight," George said.

This was not just George being his usual cheap self: That episode was over 25 years ago, but this week, it's not that expensive: You could get a nonstop round-trip flight for under $700, maybe even under $500.

But it will usually be too rich for your blood. The news gets worse: There is no good way to get to Detroit, and that's got nothing to do with the city's reputation. Forget the train. The only Amtrak route in and out of Detroit is to and from Chicago, which in the opposite direction.

The most direct route is the Lake Shore Limited, formerly known as the Twentieth Century Limited when the old New York Central Railroad ran it from Grand Central Terminal to Chicago's LaSalle Street Station. It leaves New York's Penn Station at 3:40 every afternoon, and arrives at Union Terminal in Toledo at 5:55 every morning. From there, you have to wait until 6:30 to get on a bus to Detroit's Amtrak station, arriving at 7:35. The station is at 11 W. Baltimore Avenue, at Woodward Avenue, 2 1/2 miles north of Comerica, so walking there is not a good option; the number 16 or 53 bus would take you down Woodward.

In reverse, the bus leaves Detroit at 9:30 PM -- not enough to time to get out of the arena to the station the same night, so you'd have to stay over nearly an additional 24 hours -- arrives in Toledo at 10:35, and then you have to hang around there until the Lake Shore Limited comes back at 3:15 AM, arriving back in New York at 6:47 PM. Total cost: $220. A lot cheaper than flying, but a tremendous inflammation in the posterior.

How about Greyhound? Yeah, ride a bus for 14 hours to Detroit, there's a great idea. (Rolleyes.) Actually, having done it, I can tell you that it's not that bad. Two Greyhound buses leave Port Authority every day with connections to Detroit. One is at 5:15 PM, and arrives at 7:20 AM, with a 1 hour and 35 minute stopover in Cleveland in the middle of the night (but you won't have to change buses, in case you want to stay on the bus and sleep). The other leaves Port Authority at 10:15 PM, and you will have to change buses in Cleveland, arriving 6:50 AM and leaving 7:50, arriving at 11:25 AM. Despite having to change buses, this one is actually faster, taking 13 hours and 10 minutes, as opposed to the single through bus ride, taking 14 hours and 5 minutes.

Compared to most of Detroit, the bus terminal, at 1001 Howard Street, is relatively new and quite clean. It was just about within walking distance of Tiger Stadium, which really helped me in 1999. It's also not a long walk to Ford Field, but I wouldn't recommend this. Better to take a cab, especially if you're getting a hotel. Round-trip fare is $354, but it can drop to $195 on advanced purchase. 

If you decide to drive, the directions are rather simple, down to (literally) the last mile. You'll need to get into New Jersey, and take Interstate 80 West. You'll be on I-80 for the vast majority of the trip, through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. In Ohio, in the western suburbs of Cleveland, I-80 will merge with Interstate 90. I point this out merely to help you avoid confusion, not because I-90 will become important -- though it is for "How to Be a Yankee Fan in Chicago" and some other cities.

In Ohio, you'll take I-80's Exit 64, and get onto Interstate 75 North, known as the Fisher Freeway in Detroit. This will take you into Michigan. Take Exit 50 onto Fisher Service Drive, turn left on Cass Avenue, and then turn right on Sproat Street. The Arena will be on your right.

If you do it right, you should spend about an hour in New Jersey, 5 hours and 15 minutes in Pennsylvania, 3 hours in Ohio and an hour in Michigan. That's 10 hours and 15 minutes. Counting rest stops, preferably halfway through Pennsylvania and in the Cleveland suburbs, and accounting for traffic in both New York and Detroit, it should be about 12 hours.

Once In the City. Detroit was founded in 1701 as Fort Ponchartrain du Detroit du Lac Erie (Day-TWAH, strait of Lake Erie), by Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac, for whom the downtown Cadillac Square and the brand of car was named.

Detroit's centerpoint, in culture and in terms of address numbers, is the Woodward Fountain, where Woodward, Michigan and Gratiot Avenues come together, with Cadillac Square just off to the east. Woodward is the East-West divider.

Since the July 1967 race riot, Detroit has become known as a city of poverty, crime, decay, and poor city services, the kind of place where even Batman would fear to tread. The legendary comedian Red Skelton once said, "In Detroit, you can go 10 miles and never leave the scene of the crime." It's no wonder the RoboCop film series was set there.

There was a Nike commercial a few years back, in which young basketball players were seated, yoga-style, in front of a TV screen, on which their "master," a fat black man with a turban and sunglasses who looked nothing like an athlete, was dispensing wisdom. At the end, after the Swoosh logo was shown, the camera went back to one of the students, who asked, "But, Master, what if we behave badly?" And the Master lowered his shades, looked over them, and said, "You go to Detroit."

This was in the early 1990s, when the Pistons had begun to fall from their 1989-90 "Bad Boys" championship teams, and going to Detroit was not a good option in any sport -- indeed, the only Detroit team doing well at the time was, strangely, the Lions, who were then a perennial Playoff team thanks largely to Barry Sanders.

I once saw a T-shirt that read, "I'm so bad, I vacation in Detroit." As I mentioned, I have. (I'm not saying I'm "bad," or a "hard man," just that I went.) Newark had a race riot 2 weeks before Detroit's. In May 1999, I saw Detroit, and I realized just how far back Newark had come, by seeing how far Detroit had not.

In the 1950 Census, Detroit was the 4th-largest city in America, after New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, with over 2 million people just within the city limits. "White flight" after the '67 riot has led to the Detroit metropolitan area having roughly the same number of people it had then, about 5.3 million, but within the city limits the number has dropped from over 2 million to just 680,000. The suburbs are beautiful, but the city itself is a hole, and good men (and a few bad ones) have busted their humps trying to get it back on its feet.

One of the good men who tried was Mike Ilitch, probably the most famous American of Macedonian descent, who runs Little Caesar's Pizza, and owns the Tigers and Red Wings. He rebuilt the city's historic Fox Theater, put Little Caesar's headquarters in the building above it, and had Comerica Park built across the street. He, and many others, including Pistons Hall-of-Famer turned major area businessman Dave Bing, who served a term as Mayor, are trying, they really are.

But Governor Rick Snyder, a Tea Party Republican, ordered a State takeover of Detroit's finances. Apparently, he didn't learn the lesson of Hugh Carey, New York's Governor in 1975, who found another way to get New York City's finances back on their feet. In Detroit's case, as in every other place in which it's tried, austerity hasn't worked.

As recently as 1950, the city was 83 percent white, 16 percent black. By the time of the 1967 riot, it was about half and half. Now, it's 82 percent black, 8 percent white, 7 percent Hispanic, 1 percent Asian. But Wayne County, which includes, but is not limited to, the City of Detroit? 52 percent white, 40 percent black, 5 percent Hispanic, 3 percent Asian. Oakland County? 77 percent white, 13 percent black, 6 percent Asian, 4 percent Hispanic. If there's another city in America that's that segregated, I'm not aware of it.

Detroit will never escape the stigma of the 12th Street Riot in July 1967. But it previously had race riots in 1863 and 1943. Even Benton Harbor, in Western Michigan, on the east coast of Lake Michigan, had race riots in 1960, 1966, 1967, 1990 and 2003.

Detroit is a weird city in some ways. It often seems like a cross between a past that was once glorious but now impossible to reach, and a future that never quite happened. (That observation was once made about the remaining structures from New York's 1964-65 World's Fair and the Astrodome in Houston.) Art Deco structures of the 1920s and '30s, such as the Penobscot Building (the tallest building outside New York and Chicago when it opened in 1928, the tallest in Michigan until 1977) stand alongside abandoned, boarded-up or chained-up stores.

But alongside or across from them, there are glassy, modern structures such as the Renaissance Center, shown in the photo above: A 5-tower complex that includes, at its center, the 750-foot tallest building in Michigan (the tallest all-hotel skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere), and, in one of its 4 outer towers, the headquarters of General Motors (although the RenCen was originally financed by Ford).

Downtown also has the Detroit People Mover, a monorail system that is part of the suggestion of Detroit trying to get from 1928 to 2028 while jumping over the difficult years in between. Like the Washington and Montreal Metro (subway) systems, the company running it prides itself on the artwork in its stations.

The People Mover, outside the Renaissance Center

It has a stop called Times Square, but it won't look anything like the one in New York. It has a stop called Bricktown, but it won't look anything like Brick Township, the sprawling Jersey Shore suburb off Exits 88 to 91 on the Garden State Parkway. It's cheap, only 75 cents, and it still uses tokens, although it also accepts cash. Be advised, though, that it stops running at midnight, except on Fridays and Saturdays, when it runs until 2:00 AM. Bus fare is $1.50.

ZIP Codes in the Detroit area start with the digits 480, 481, 482 and 483, and the Area Code is 313, with 248 (overlaid by 947), 586 and 734 serving the suburbs. Detroit has no "beltway." The sales tax in the State of Michigan is 6 percent, and does not go up in either the County of Wayne or the City of Detroit. As with New York, Chicago and a few other cities, the electricity in Detroit is run by a company with the name of the inventor of the electricity industry (if not the light bulb): Detroit Edison Company.

Going In. The Little Caesars Arena opened in 2017. Its official address is 2645 Woodward Avenue, at Henry Street, across Interstate 75 from Comerica Park and Ford Field, and about a mile north of downtown. The arena, originally known as the Detroit Events Center, was, surprising no one, renamed for Mike Ilitch's pizza company.

"Pizza, pizza."

Take Bus 053. If you drive in, parking is $24. This is more than for a Devils home game, but it's a lot better than parking at Tiger Stadium, which usually had people boxed in, resulting in tremendous traffic jams both before and after the game (and, every bit as much as the crime and the condition of the stadium, was why the Lions wanted to get out and built the Silverdome). It also involved local kids being willing to "Watch your car, Mister?" for a small fee. Translation: "If you pay me $5.00, I'll make sure nobody damages your car. If you don't pay me, I'll make sure somebody, namely myself, does."

Seating 19,515 for hockey and 20,491 for basketball -- slightly less than Joe Louis Arena -- it is 1 of 10 arenas currently hosting an NHL team and an NBA team. The court is laid out east-to-west.

The Pistons' arrival meant that not only would all 4 Detroit-area teams be playing in the city for the 1st time since 1974, but that both of the teams that moved out to the suburbs have moved back: The Lions after 27 seasons, 1975 to 2001; and the Pistons after 39 seasons, 1978 to 2017. So "Dee-troit bas-ket-ball" is again being played in Detroit, not just sort-of near it.

"The Baddest Bowl" is also, even more so that Boston's TD Garden with its Beanpot Tournament, the capital of American college hockey. Like its predecessors the Olympia from 1965 to 1978, and the Joe Louis Arena from 1979 to 2016, in the week between Christmas and New Year's, it hosts the Great Lakes Invitational, with the University of Michigan, Michigan State and Upper Peninsula-based Michigan Tech participating every season.

The 4-team selection has been rounded out by nearby schools such as Western Michigan, Northern Michigan and Lake Superior State; Midwestern powers like Wisconsin and North Dakota (but never, as yet, Minnesota); and even New Jersey's Princeton. Michigan, the defending champion, has won it 17 times, Michigan State 12, and Michigan Tech 10. It also alternates hosting the Big Ten hockey tournament with the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, home of the Minnesota Wild.

In addition, it is set to rotate with the Xcel Energy Center as host of the Big Ten hockey tournament, and hosted 2018 NCAA Tournament basketball games.

The 1st event was on September 12, 2017, a concert, by a Detroit area native. Unfortunately, it was by millionaire kid turned Trumpian U.S. Senate candidate Robert Ritchie, a.k.a. slob rocker Kid Rock.

Paul McCartney, The Eagles (without the late Michigan native Glenn Frey), Janet Jackson, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, New Jersey native Halsey, Katy Perry, Demi Lovato, Justin Timberlake, Hall & Oates, Shania Twain, former One Direction singer Harry Styles, Radiohead, Shakira, Drake, Bruno Mars and Elton John have already played concerts there.

Food. When I visited Tiger Stadium in its final season, 1999, it had great food, including the very best ballpark hot dog I've ever had. Since they were owned by Little Caesars mogul Ilitch, and before that were owned by Domino's Pizza boss Tom Monaghan, food was, and remains, taken very seriously by the club. This is, after all, Big Ten Country, where college football tailgate parties are practically a sacrament. One would hope that the same would be true of the Red Wings.

They are. As you would expect, there are Little Caesars stands, but there's also Mike's Pizza Bar, named for Ilitch. There's also Bell's Brewery, the Dearborn Sausage Haus, the Via Sports Bar, and the 313 Grill Co. (named for Detroit's Area Code).

What is "Detroit style pizza"? It's rectangular, with toppings such as pepperoni and mushrooms, and is differentiated from the styles of New York and Chicago with a thick, crispy bottom crust. There's also "Coneys," Detroit-style hot dogs, with chili, cheese and onions. These are also popular in Cincinnati -- but not many of them are sold at Coney Island.

Team History Displays. The Palace's very address, 6 Championship Drive, was a testament to its history, although half of those titles, 3, were WNBA titles won by the now-gone Detroit Shock (all coached by Pistons legend Bill Laimbeer).

The Shock's 2003, 2006 and 2008 WNBA Championship banners still hang in the Palace rafters, but the Pistons brought with them to the Little Caesars Arena their NBA Championship banners for 1989, 1990 and 2004; their Eastern Conference Championship banners for 1988, 1989, 1990, 2004 and 2005; and their Central Division Championship banners for 1988, 1989, 1990, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. (They won the 2004 NBA title without having won their Division in the regular season.)

Their is no notation of the Pistons' Fort Wayne era (1941-57), even though they reached the NBA Finals in 1955 and '56, and their 1944 and '45 National Basketball League titles made them, essentially, the world champions of professional basketball in those seasons. They note neither championships nor retired numbers from those days. And, yes, there was an auto/war vehicles plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana, so the "Pistons" name made sense long before they arrived in the Motor City.

The Pistons have 13 banners honoring team legends. From the 1970s, before their 1st title, the Pistons have honored Number 15, center Bob Lanier; and Number 21, Dave Bing, who served a term as Mayor of Detroit.

From the 1989 and 1990 World Championship teams, a.k.a. the Motor City Bad Boys, these numbers are retired: 4, guard Joe Dumars; 10, forward Dennis Rodman; 11, guard Isiah Thomas; 15, guard Vinnie Johnson; and 40, center Bill Laimbeer.

Longtime team owner William Davidson, who built the Palace, has a long banner with his signature on it. Jack McCloskey, who built the Bad Boys title team, has a banner with "GM" standing in for a number, standing for "general manager," not "General Motors." Chuck Daly, who coached the Pistons to their 1st 2 titles, has the Number 2 retired for him. So far, the Number 44 of Rick Mahorn remains available.

From the 2004 World Championship team, which Dumars built as general manager: 1, guard Chauncey Billups; 3, center Ben Wallace; and 32, guard Richard "Rip" Hamilton.

Photo of the banners from the Palace.

The banners for Billups, Wallace and Hamilton

were put in a separate row.

Greg Monroe was wearing 10 when the number was retired for Rodman. The basketball player I like to call "the other Reggie Jackson" was wearing 1 when it was retired for Billups. In each case, the honoree gave the current wearer permission to keep wearing it as long as he remained with the Pistons.

Bing, Lanier, Thomas, Rodman, Dumars, Wallace, Daly, Davidson, 1960s forwards Bailey Howell and Dave DeBusschere (later acquired by the Knicks), 1980s title team forward Adrian Dantley, and 2004 title-winning coach Larry Brown (still the only man to coach both an NCAA Champion and an NBA Champion) have been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame based at least in part on what they did with the Pistons in Detroit. So has 1990s forward Grant Hill.

So have 4 players from the team's Fort Wayne days: Guards Bobby McDermott and Andy Phillip, forward George Yardley, and center Bob Houbregs. So has Fred Zollner, the owner who moved them to Detroit.

While Dick Vitale did coach the Pistons (and the University of Detroit Mercy), and he has been elected to the Hall, it was based on his broadcasting career, not on his coaching. (He was a decent college coach, but awful in the NBA.)

DeBusschere, Bing, Thomas and Rodman were named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players in 1996, and also to the 75th Anniversary 75 Greatest Players in 2021. Katie Smith of the Shock, now head coach of the New York Liberty, was named to the WNBA's 15th Anniversary 15 Greatest Players in 2012. She, Swin Cash and Deanna Nolan were named to the WNBA Top 20 at 20 in 2016 -- in the 20th Season, rather than at the 20th Anniversary.

Zollner, DeBusschere, Yardley, Bing, Lanier, Davidson, McCloskey, Daly, Thomas, Rodman, Johnson, Laimbeer, Dumars, Ben Wallace (but not, as yet, Rasheed) and Ray Scott, a Pistons forward in the 1960s, have been elected to the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, located at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit.

One of the streets outside the Palace was named Isiah Thomas Drive, although those of you who are Knicks fans may want to ignore that name. The Little Caesars Arena has statues of Gordie Howe and Joe Louis, but, as yet, no Pistons.

As you might guess, the Pistons' biggest rivalry is with the Chicago Bulls, going back to the Bulls' inception in 1966, and peaking in the George H.W. Bush era, 1988 to 1992, when each team had to g through the other to get to the NBA Finals. The rivalry couldn't get much closer: The Bulls lead it 154-152.

Stuff. The Little Caesars Arena has a Team Store is on the south side, with an address of 76 Henry Street. There's also a store named Hockeytown Authentics, owned by Olympia Entertainment. 1845 E. Big Beaver Road in Troy, next to the Troy Sports Center, 19 miles north of downtown. Car only.

Most of the books about the Pistons focus on the 1988-89 and 1989-90 title-winning Bad Boys. A good retrospective, if a bit out of date, is the 1997 book The Detroit Pistons: Four Decades of Motor City Memories, by Steve Addy. After the 2004 title, the staff of the Detroit Free Press published Men at Work: Blue-Collar Pistons Show Who's the Boss. DVD collections for the 1989, 1990 and 2004 World Championship teams are also available.

Charles C. Avison wrote Detroit: City of Champions, telling of how the city produced champion after champion in the Great Depression and World War II: The Tigers winning Pennants in 1934, '35, '40 and '45; the Lions debuting in 1934 and winning the NFL Championship in 1935; the Red Wings winning the Stanley Cup in 1936, '37 and '43; and Alabama-born, Detroit-trained Joe Louis winning the Heavyweight Championship of the World in 1937 and keeping it until his first retirement in 1948. Back then, Detroit was a city where anything was possible. But then, the Pistons didn't arrive in the Motor City until 1957.

During the Game. A November 13, 2014 article on DailyRotoHelp ranked the NBA teams' fan bases, and listed the Pistons' fans as 25th. The days of packing 'em in for "Dee-troit bas-ket-ball!" are over, at least for now. The article compares the Pistons to the Oakland Athletics: A once-great but now terrible team in a once-hip but now terribly poor city (in the Pistons' case, being in the wealthy suburbs until 2017 didn't seem to help), and playing in a large venue that they cannot hope to fill.

You might think this would lead the fans who do show up to have a chip on their shoulder, and to be nasty. Most likely, they won't be. "The Malice at the Palace" (where, not to condone the players' reactions, but the fans did provoke them) was 14 seasons ago. It was 1 event in the 64-season history of Detroit Pistons basketball. You do not have to fear for Pistons players running into the seats to come after you.

Nor do you have to worry about wearing your Knicks or Nets gear in the Arena, or anywhere in the Detroit area. Maybe if you were wearing Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, or possibly Boston Celtics or Los Angeles Lakers stuff. Not Knicks or Nets.

In those 64 years, the Pistons have had just 2 public-address announcers. (Those of you who are Yankee Fans may scoff, knowing that the Bronx Bombers had only Bob Sheppard for 57 years. But it's still remarkable.) Ken Calvert served from 1958 to 2001, at the Olympia, Cobo Hall, the Silverdome and the Palace, including the rise and fall of the Motor City Bad Boys of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Since 2001, the announcer has been John Mason, who made the chant, "Dee-troit bas-ket-ball!" famous. He became so admired around the NBA that he was invited to announce the 2007 All-Star Game in Las Vegas, which, of course, does not have a team of its own. He hosts 2 different daily radio shows in Detroit.

None of the Pistons' 3 2018-19 games against a New York teams will feature a promotion. LaShell Renee is their regular National Anthem singer. In addition to the "Dee-troit bas-ket-ball!" chant, the Pistons use Europe's "The Final Countdown" as a get-the-crowd-going song.

LaShell Renee

Their mascot is Hooper the Horse -- a "hooper" is a basketball player, and a car's pistons provide "horsepower," get it? Some of Hooper's stunts include rappelling off the roof of the Palace, and breaking bricks with his hoof. He can also juggle and perform magic tricks. Hooper's "birthday" is March 15, and he celebrates his birthday at a Pistons home game. Guests often include other NBA mascots, plus fellow Detroit mascots Paws the Tiger and Roary the Lion.

Hooper is not much of a Hula Hooper.

The Pistons have a Cheer Team (currently 9 men and 11 women), a Dance Team (18, all women), another dance team called the D-Town dancers (14, all men), and a Drumline (15, all but 1 of them men -- as far as I know, the closest any NBA team comes to having a pep band). I can see having a cheer/dance team, but 3 separate teams that, essentially, do the same thing?

Those of you who are Yankee Fans might see the name Reggie Jackson playing for the Pistons. No relation to Mr. October, he previously reached the NBA Finals for the Oklahoma City Thunder.

After the Game. With Detroit's rough reputation, I would recommend not hanging around downtown after a night game. If you want a postgame drink or meal, you're better off sticking to your hotel.

But when you come out of the arena, at the northeast corner, at Woodward and Sproat, there's District Market, which calls itself "restaurants within a restaurant." There's Sugar and Brew (a Midwestern mini-Starbucks), Mex n Co, and Moroccan Lamb & Fig. 

Left over from Joe Louis Arena are some recommendations from local fan websites, although most of them closed after the Arena was demolished. The Anchor Bar at 450 W. Fort Street is still open, but should not be confused with the Buffalo bar of the same name, which invented Buffalo wings.

Giants gather at the Town Pump Tavern, 100 W. Montcalm Street at Park Avenue, 2 blocks from Comerica Park. Harry's Detroit Bar is also said to be a Giants' fan haven. It's right over the Fisher Freeway overpass from Comerica and the Town Pump, at 2482 Clifford Street, near the famous Cass Tech High School. Be warned, though, that over the freeway is not an area to traverse at night. 

If your visit to Detroit is during the European soccer season, which is now in full gear, most of the better choices to watch games are in the suburbs. Thomas Magee's Sporting House Whiskey Bar is the home pub of the Detroit branch of the U.S. national team fan group, the American Outlaws. 1408 East Fisher Service Drive, in the Lafayette Park neighborhood, about a mile east of the arena. 5-minute walk from Comerica Park and Ford Field. SMART Bus 34 to Gratiot and Russell.

Sidelights. On November 30, 2018, Thrillist published a list of "America's 25 Most Fun Cities," and Detroit, for all its problems, came in 20th. For all its problems, Detroit is a great city, not just a great basketball city or even a great sports city. Check out the following – but do it in daylight:

* Cobo Hall and Joe Louis Arena. From 1979 to 2017, the Red Wings played at the riverfront arena named for the Alabama-born, Detroit-raised-and-trained Heavyweight Champion of the World from 1937 to 1949. While there, they reached 6 Stanley Cup Finals, winning 4, and became what the Boston Bruins used to be, and what the New York Rangers only dream they are: The signature team of American hockey.

It hosted the NCAA Frozen Four in 1985, 1987 and 1990. The Joe was home to the Detroit Drive of Arena Football from 1988 to 1993. They won as many league championships in 5 seasons as the Lions have won in over 80: 4, in 1988, 1989, 1990 and 1992. In fact, they made the ArenaBowl every season of their existence. The Joe also hosted the ArenaBowl in 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1993. So what happened? Mike Ilitch, who also owned the Red Wings, sold the Drive so that he could buy the Tigers. The Drive were moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, played 1 more season, and folded.

The Joe also hosted the 1980 Republican Convention, which nominated Ronald Reagan for President. Think about it: An arena named for a black heavyweight champion who knocked out a symbol (however unwillingly) of fascism, in a mostly-black city, with heavy union presence in the metropolitan area (it was, after all the hometown of the United Auto Workers and Jimmy Hoffa), hosting the Republican Convention.

Many people complained that the stairs at the entrances were very steep, and at certain areas on the outside of the arena, were breaking apart. To make matters worse, the arena was the same model as the Meadowlands Arena and the Nassau Coliseum: One level of concourse for two levels of seats. There also wasn't enough bathrooms, resulting in very long lines, and a drop in atmosphere at the starts of the 2nd and 3rd periods, as many fans didn't make it back in time. So the Wings decided to build a new arena. Demolition is scheduled to begin within days.

The Joe was built next-door to Cobo Center, which was named for Albert E. Cobo, Mayor from 1950 to 1957. Its centerpiece, a building originally known as Cobo Hall, has been Detroit's major convention center since its opening in 1960, and, following the rejection of a plan to demolish it and put a new Pistons-Red Wings arena on the site, it recently underwent a renovation and expansion.

It includes a 12,000-seat arena that was home to the Pistons from 1961 to 1978, the Michigan Stags of the World Hockey Association in the 1974-75 season, and a convention complex that includes the city's famed annual auto show. It is known for some legendary rock concerts, including the KISS album Alive! and area native Bob Seger's Live Bullet. Unfortunately, it may be best known for the January 6, 1994 attack on Nancy Kerrigan during a practice session for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Cobo Hall hosted a fight for the Heavyweight Championship of the World on November 18, 1970, with Joe Frazier remaining Champion by knocking out Light Heavyweight Champion Bob Foster. As you might guess, Joe Louis Arena also hosted one, on June 12, 1981, just 2 months after Louis died: Larry Holmes remained Champion by knocking out former Champion Leon Spinks.

The Cobo Center is now named the TCF Center. Its address is 600 Civic Center Drive, at Jefferson Avenue; and of Joe Louis Arena, 19 Steve Yzerman Drive. Each arena has its own station on the Detroit People Mover.

* Comerica Park and Ford Field. Home to the Tigers since 2000, the team has seen the good (Pennants in 2006 and '12), the bad (a nosedive that cost them the American League Central Division title in 2008), and the ugly (losing an AL record 119 games in 2003) at Comerica Park. The official address is 2100 Woodward Avenue, but Woodward does not border the park; Witherell, Montcalm and Brush Streets, and Adams Avenue, do. The Lions have mostly been terrible at Ford Field, whose address is 2000 Brush Street.

The area around Comerica Park (named for a Midwest-based bank) and Ford Field (named for the automaker), at the northern edge of downtown Detroit, is called Foxtown, after the Fox Theater, which, as I said, Tigers/Wings/Little Caesars owner Mike Ilitch had restored.

Ford Field hosted Super Bowl XL in 2006, won by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the final game of Detroit native Jerome Bettis; the 2010 NCAA Frozen Four; and the 2009 NCAA Final Four, the only one ever held in the State of Michigan, won by North Carolina, overcoming a "home-court advantage" for Michigan State in the Final. Appropriately, for a city on the U.S.-Canadian border, it hosted a match between the U.S. and Canada soccer teams on June 7, 2011. The U.S. won. (UPDATE: It will host the Final Four again in 2027.)

* Site of Tiger Stadium. The first ballpark on the site was called Bennett Park, after Charlie Bennett, a catcher for the NL's Detroit Wolverines, who didn't play there. Bennett Park opened in 1896, for the Detroit team in the Western League, which became the American League in 1901. However, the team we know as the Tigers (so named because the orange stripes on their socks evoked not just tigers but the teams at New Jersey's Princeton University, also called the Tigers) are officially dated from 1901.

After the 1911 season, the wooden Bennett Park was demolished, and replaced with a concrete and steel structure, opening on April 20, 1912 (the same day as Fenway Park in Boston) and named Navin Field, after Tiger owner Frank Navin. He died in 1935, and his co-owner, Walter Briggs, expanded the place to its more familiar configuration in 1938, renaming it Briggs Stadium. In 1961, new owner John Fetzer renamed it Tiger Stadium.

The Tigers played there from 1912 to 1999, and the NFL's Lions did so from 1938 to 1974. The Tigers won the World Series while playing there in 1935, 1945, 1968 and 1984; the Lions won the NFL Championship while playing there in 1952, 1953 and 1957. (The '52 Championship Game was played in Cleveland against the Browns; the '53 and '57 editions, also against the Browns, at Tiger Stadium.)

In addition, early NFL teams the Detroit Heralds played there in 1920 and '21, and the Detroit Panthers in 1926. Detroit's own Joe Louis defended the Heavyweight Championship of the World at Tiger (then Briggs) Stadium on September 20, 1939, knocking Bob Pastor out. The Three Tenors -- Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and José Carreras -- sang at Tiger Stadium on July 17, 1999.

A youth baseball field is on the site now. Northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Trumbull Street, 1 mile west of Cadillac Square down Michigan Avenue (U.S. Route 12). Number 29 bus from downtown.

* Site of Olympia Stadium. From the outside, it looked more like a big brick movie theater, complete with the Art Deco marquee out front. But "The Old Red Barn" was home to the Red Wings from 1927 to 1979, during which time they won the Stanley Cup in 1936, '37, '43, '50, '52, '54 and '55.

In 1950, they hosted Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, and Pete Babando's overtime winner defeated the Rangers. In '54, they had another overtime Game 7 winner, as "Tough Tony" Leswick hit a shot that deflected off Doug Harvey, the great defenseman of the Montreal Canadiens. (In hockey, the shooter is still credited; in soccer, this would have been officially listed as an "own goal" on Harvey.)

A rare color photo of a Wings game at the Olympia

The Olympia was also home to the Pistons from 1957 to 1961; the Falcons in the NBA's inaugural season of 1946-47; the NCAA Frozen Four in 1977 and 1979; and the site of some great prizefights, including Jake LaMotta's 1942 win over Sugar Ray Robinson – the only fight Robinson would lose in his career until 1952, and the only one of the 6 fights he had with LaMotta that LaMotta won.

Despite Detroit being his adopted hometown, Joe Louis only had 1 fight at the Olympia. On March 21, 1941, he knocked Abe Simon out. It had just 1 other fight for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, on March 7, 1951, the 2nd of 4 fights between Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott, with Charles retaining the title by a unanimous decision.

Elvis Presley did 2 shows there early in his career, an afternoon and an evening show on March 31, 1957. (If you think that's a lot for one day, he did 3 shows at the Fox Theater on May 25, 1956.) He returned to the Olympia on September 11, 1970; April 6, 1972; September 29 and October 4, 1974; and April 22, 1977.

The Beatles played there on September 6, 1964 and August 13, 1966. (However, it was in the Detroit area -- specifically, on the University of Michigan's radio station in Ann Arbor -- that a disc jockey started the 1969 rumor that Paul McCartney was dead. In a 1989 interview, Paul said, "'Paul is dead'? I didn't believe that one for a minute.")

It was the neighborhood, not the building, that was falling apart: Lincoln Cavalieri, its general manager in its last years, once said, "If an atom bomb landed, I'd want to be in Olympia." It was not a nuclear attack, but an ordinary demolition crew, that took it down in 1987. The Olympia Armory, home of the Michigan National Guard, is now on the site. 5920 Grand River Avenue, corner of McGraw Street, on the Northwest Side. Number 21 bus. If you're a hockey fan, by all means, visit – but do it in daylight.

* University of Detroit Stadium. Also known as Titan Stadium, this was the Lions' first home, from 1934 to 1937, until what became Tiger Stadium was double-decked. The Lions played and won the 1935 NFL Championship Game there, beating the Giants.

The previous NFL team in the city, the Detroit Wolverines, play there in their lone season, 1928. Built in 1922 and seating 25,000, the University's suspension of its football program in 1964 doomed it, and it was demolished in 1971. The school, now known as the University of Detroit Mercy (it's a Catholic school), has since put a new, multipurpose, artificial turf field on the site. 3801 McNichols Road at Birchcrest Drive. 016 Bus.

* Silverdome. Originally Pontiac Metropolitan Stadium, this stadium was home to the Lions from 1975 to 2001 (after which they moved back downtown to Ford Field), and very nearly became home to the Tigers as well, before owner John Fetzer decided to commit himself to Tiger Stadium. Heisman-winning running backs Billy Sims and Barry Sanders ran wild for the Lions here, but the closest they got to a Super Bowl was reaching the NFC Championship Game in January 1992 – unless you count hosting Super Bowl XVI, 10 years earlier, the beginning of the San Francisco 49er dynasty led by Bill Walsh and Joe Montana.

The Pistons, playing here from 1978 to 1988, had a little more luck, reaching the NBA Finals in their last year there. It seated 80,000 for football, set an NBA attendance record (since broken) of 61,983 between the Pistons and Boston Celtics in 1988, and 93,682 for a Mass by Pope John Paul II in 1987.

In 1994, it hosted 4 World Cup matches, including 1 by the U.S. and 1 by eventual winner Brazil. It hosted 2 games by the U.S. national soccer team, in 1992 win over Russia and the 1994 World Cup draw against Switzerland. Elvis had his biggest crowd ever at the Silverdome, 60,500, on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1975.

It hosted a Don King-promoted boxing card in January 2011, and in August 2010 hosted a friendly between Italian soccer giant A.C. Milan and leading Greek club Panathinaikos – appropriate, considering the area's ethnic makeup.

In 2013, the roof was deflated as an energy-saving measure, with the idea that, if a new tenant was found, a new roof would be put in as part of renovations. But in October 2015, it was announced that the Silverdome would be demolished the following Spring, and the area would be part of a Oakland County, Michigan mixed-use development. After the explosives failed the previous day, the Silverdome was imploded on December 4, 2017.

1200 Featherstone Road, Pontiac. Getting there by public transportation is a pain: The Number 465 bus takes an hour and 25 minutes, and then you gotta walk a mile down Featherstone from Oakland Community College. So if you didn't drive in (or rent a car at the airport), unless you have to see everything on this list, or if you're a Lions fan living in New York who has to see it one more time, or if you're a soccer nut on a pilgrimage to all World Cup sites, I'd suggest skipping it.

* The Palace. Home to the Pistons from 1988 to 2017, they won the 1989, 1990 and 2004 NBA Championships here, and almost won another in 2005. The Detroit Shock won 3 WNBA Championships here, and, as a result, every time a title was won, the address changed: Currently, it's "Six Championship Drive, Auburn Hills, MI 48326." However, the Shock moved to Tulsa in 2010, so unless the arena stays open and becomes the home of a new WNBA team, the address will never change to "Seven Championship Drive."

Unfortunately, the 22,000-seat building's best-known event isn't a Pistons title or a rock concert, but the November 19, 2004 fight between the Pistons and the Indiana Pacers that spilled into the stands, becoming known as "the Malice at the Palace." Even the WNBA had a rare brawl there, between the Shock and the Los Angeles Sparks in 2008.

The Shock moved to Tulsa in 2010, and the Pistons just moved to Little Caesars Arena, so the address will never become "Seven Championship Drive." What will happen to the arena now is not clear: It has outlived Tiger Stadium, the Silverdome and the Olympia, and will almost certainly outlive Joe Louis Arena. It has lived to see its 30th Anniversary. But I wouldn't bet on it seeing a 40th.

Lapeer Road and Harmon Road, Auburn Hills, off I-75. Don't even think about trying to reach it by public transportation: You'd need 2 buses and then a half-hour walk. So unless you've got a car, or you're a big sucker for NBA history, I'd suggest skipping it.

* Mack Park. The Negro Leagues' Detroit Stars played here from 1920 to 1929, featuring center fielder Norman "Turkey" Stearnes and pitcher Andy Cooper, who would both be posthumously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. A senior citizens' complex, the Fairview Apartments, is on the site now. 3568 Fairview Street at Mack Avenue, about 5 miles east of downtown. Bus 7 will get you within a 15-minute walk.

* Hamtramck Stadium. After Mack Park burned down in 1929, they moved into this nearby facility for the 1930 season. Pronounced "Ham-TRAM-ick," this city is actually completely surrounded by Detroit. But between the Mack Park fire and the start of the Great Depression at the end of the year, the Stars' fate was sealed.

New teams with the name would occasionally be revived. At its peak, Hamtramck Stadium seated over 8,000 people. However, the decline of the Negro Leagues and the "industrial leagues" in the 1950s doomed it to high school use, it hasn't been used at all since 2012, and its sideline wings have been removed, reducing its capacity to 1,500. Nevertheless, it is 1 of 12 Negro League ballparks still standing. 3201 Dan Street.

When the Dodge Brothers (who later sold the car company bearing their name to Chrysler) opened an auto plant in Hamtramck in 1914, it became a hub for Polish immigration. However, the Polish population of the city has dropped from 90 percent in 1970 to 22 percent today. And Arabs and South Asians have moved in, making it Michigan’s most internationally diverse city.

Nevertheless, if you want the best kielbasa, kapusta, golumpkis and paczkis this side of the Oder, this is the place to go. Hamtramck Town Shopping Center, Joseph Campau Street and Hewitt Street.

Detroit City FC plays in the 4th tier of American soccer, at Keyworth Stadium in Hamtramck, a 7,000-seat high school football stadium, 5 1/2 miles north of downtown. All of these Hamtramck locations can be reached via the Number 10 bus.

Detroit is the largest metropolitan area in North America without a Major League Soccer team, although there is a drive to get an expansion team. For the moment, the closest MLS team to Detroit is the Columbus Crew, 204 miles away. However, the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry may complicate that. The threatened move of the Crew to Austin, Texas may eliminate it altogether. The next-closest team, Toronto FC, 241 miles away, may be preferred by Detroiters, soon by default.

* Holy Redeemer High School. In the 1946-47 basketball season, the Detroit Gems played in the National Basketball League at this school. They may not have been redeemable, going 4-40. The next season, they moved, and became the Minneapolis Lakers. And so, this is where the Los Angeles Lakers franchise began. 5679 Vernor Highway, about 3 miles west of downtown. Bus 1.

* Site of Cadillac Athletic Club. Housed in the Masonic Temple from 1895 to 1935, this auditorium hosted a fight for the Heavyweight Championship of the World on April 6, 1900. Jim Jeffries retained the title by decision over John Finnegan. A bank building is now on the site. 411 W. Lafayette Blvd. Fort/Cass station on the People Mover.

Only one site in Michigan, outside Detroit and its immediate suburbs, has ever hosted a Heavyweight title fight: The Floyd Fitzsimmons Arena hosted Jack Dempsey's defense against Billy Miske on September 6, 1920. Southeast corner of Fair Avenue & Britain Avenue, about 3 miles east of downtown in Benton Harbor. The resort town is all the way across the State, on the shore of Lake Michigan, 186 miles west of Detroit, and 99 miles by road "east" of Chicago (but considerably closer as the crow flies). Amtrak goes to Benton Harbor.

*AAGPBL. From 1943 to 1954, the All-American Girls' Professional Baseball League provided an alternative to Major League Baseball. Michigan had 2 teams in the League. The Grand Rapids Chicks won Pennants in 1947 and 1953. They played at South High School, which closed in 1968. The building still stands, as the Gerald R. Ford Job Corps Center, named for the city's most famous son.  110 Hall Street SE. 161 miles northwest of downtown Detroit.

And the Kalamazoo Lassies won the League's last Pennant, in 1954. They played at Lindstrom Field, at 3100 Portage Street. Stores are on the site now. 139 miles west of downtown Detroit, and 145 miles east of Chicago's Loop.

* Motown Historical Museum. As always, I'm going to include some non-sports items. Detroit is generally known for 3 good things: Sports, music and cars. The Motown Historical Museum is the former Motown Records studio, which company founder Berry Gordy Jr. labeled "Hitsville, U.S.A." His sister, Esther Gordy Edwards, now runs it, and it features records and costumes of performers such as the Supremes, the Temptations and the Four Tops. 2648 W. Grand Blvd., on the North Side. Number 16 bus.

* Henry Ford Museum. The centerpiece of the nation's foremost automotive-themed museum is a replica of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Henry Ford himself established the museum: "I am collecting the history of our people as written into things their hands made and used... When we are through, we shall have reproduced American life as lived, and that, I think, is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition."

It contains the fascinating, including early cars and bicycles, Henry Ford's 1st car (his 1896 "Quadricycle"), Igor Sikorsky's prototype for the helicopter, the bus Rosa Parks was riding in when she refused to give up her seat to start the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and a Buckminster Fuller "Dymaxion house." It also contains the macabre, with the chair Abraham Lincoln was supposedly sitting in when he was assassinated at Ford's Theater in Washington (the theater owner was no relation to Henry); and the chair, and the rest of the car as well, that John F. Kennedy was definitely sitting in when he was assassinated, the back seat of in the 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible limousine he was riding in through downtown Dallas.

Next door to the museum is Greenfield Village, which Ford imagined as a kind of historical park, a more modern version of Colonial Williamsburg – that is, celebrating what was, in 1929 when it opened, considered modern American life, including a reconstruction of the Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory of his good friend Thomas Edison. Ford and Edison were both friends of rubber magnate Henry Firestone (whose tires certainly made Ford's cars easier to make), and Firestone's family farm is reconstructed on the site.

Please note that I am not excusing Henry Ford's control-freak attitude toward his employees' private lives, nor his despicable anti-Semitism, nor his failed union-busting in the 1930s. To be fair, he did give his black auto workers the same pay and benefits as his white ones. But I am recommending the museum. It's a tribute to the role of technology, including the automobile, in American life, not to the man himself. Oakwood Blvd. and Village Road. Number 200 bus to Michigan Avenue and Oakwood Blvd., then a short walk down Oakwood.

* Greektown Historic District. Although Detroit is famed for its Irish (Corktown, including the site of Tiger Stadium) and Italian communities, and has the largest Arab-American community of any major city, its best-known ethnic neighborhoods are Greektown and the Polish community of Hamtramck. New York's Astoria, Queens has nothing on Detroit's Greektown, which not only has some of the country's finest Greek restaurants, but also the Greektown Casino, which is at 555 E. Lafayette Street, at Beaubien Street. Greektown Station on the People Mover.

* Mariners' Church. On my 1999 visit to Detroit, I discovered this church by accident, walking past it without realizing it was there until I saw the historical marker. Every March, it holds a Blessing of the Fleet for every person and ship going to sea. Every November, it holds a Great Lakes Memorial Service for those who have lost their lives at sea within the past year.

The most famous of these ceremonies was for the 29 men lost on the iron ore freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. Built and homeported in Detroit, the Big Fitz was commemorated by Gordon Lightfoot, whose 1976 song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" mistakenly, but poetically, called the church "The Maritime Sailors' Cathedral." (Edmund Fitzgerald himself was the president of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, which invested in the ship's construction, because it was heavily invested in the ore industry.)

170 E. Jefferson Avenue, at Randolph Street, across from the Renaissance Center. If you're going to visit the church, be careful, because Randolph Street empties into the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.

* Spirit of Detroit. In front of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, the city hall named for the 1974-93 Mayor, stands a marble monument with a bronze statue of a kneeling man, the seals of the City of Detroit and Wayne County, and a Biblical inscription, from 2nd Corinthians 3:17: "Now the Lord is that spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

In his left hand, the 26-foot-high kneeling figure holds a gilt bronze sphere emanating rays, to symbolize God. The people in the figure's right hand are a family group.

The statue was dedicated in 1958, 4 years after the Municipal Center opened. In recent years, a large jersey has been placed over it when the Tigers, Pistons or Wings have been in their sport's finals. (As yet, this has never been done for the Lions, who haven't been to an NFL Championship Game since 1957, 9 seasons before they started calling it the Super Bowl.) 2 Woodward Avenue at Jefferson Avenue.

The Spirit of Detroit, wearing a Pistons jersey

in honor of the 2004 NBA Finals, which they won

* Monument to Joe Louis. Erected in 1986, on a traffic island at the intersection of Woodward & Jefferson, it is a 24-foot-long arm with a fisted hand suspended by a 24-foot-high pyramidal framework. Since it is a monument to Louis, the great black heavyweight champion, the arm and fist are black bronze.

The Louis Monument, with the Spirit of Detroit behind it

* Colleges. The University of Michigan is 44 miles west of downtown Detroit, in Ann Arbor.  It is possible to reach it from Detroit by bus, but it will take 2 hours: You can take the 851 bus to the airport, and transfer there to the 787.

Gerald Ford (no relation to Henry) was President from August 9, 1974 to January 20, 1977, and was a graduate of (and an All-American football player at) Michigan in the 1930s. His Presidential Library, and a School of Public Policy named for him, are on the Ann Arbor campus, at 1000 Beal Avenue.

However, he is the only President whose Library and Museum are separated, and his Presidential Museum, where he and Betty are buried, is in his hometown of Grand Rapids, at 303 Pearl Street NW, 158 miles northwest of Detroit. You'll need Greyhound if you want to visit Grand Rapids.

Michigan Stadium is at 1201 S. Main Street at Stadium Blvd. "The Big House" has hosted UM football since 1927. Its peak attendance is 115,109 for Michigan's 2013 win over Notre Dame. This past year, it set new records for highest U.S. attendance for soccer (109,318 for Manchester United beating Real Madrid in the International Champions Cup), and for highest attendance anywhere on the planet for hockey (105,491 for the NHL Winter Classic, the Toronto Maple Leafs beating the Detroit Red Wings).

Adjacent is Crisler Arena, named for Herbert "Fritz" Crisler, the UM football coach from 1938 to 1947, who, in another connection between Princeton University sports and the State of Michigan, had previously coached Princeton's Tigers, and brought his "winged" helmet design with him, making Michigan's "maize and blue" helmets among the most famous in college football. Elvis sang at Crisler Arena on April 24, 1977. The other sports facilities, including Yost Arena (hockey) and Fisher Stadium (named for Ray Fisher, who pitched for the Yankees in the 1910s before they got good and then coached at Michigan, including Charlie Gehringer), are adjacent.

Michigan State University is 88 miles northwest of Detroit, in East Lansing, adjacent to Lansing, the State capital.  Greyhound runs 4 buses a day from Detroit to East Lansing, at 8:00 AM, 12:10 PM, 2:20 PM and 7:40 PM, and it takes about 2 hours. Two buses go back to Detroit, at 3:40 and 5:55 PM. $38 round-trip.

Spartan Stadium, formerly Macklin Field, is at 325 W. Shaw Lane at Red Cedar Road, which is named for the river that bisects the MSU campus. Jenison Field House (the old basketball arena, where Magic Johnson starred on their 1979 National Champions), Breslin Events Center (their new arena), and Munn Arena (hockey) are a short walk away, at Kalamazoo Street & Birch Road.

According to an October 3, 2014 article in The New York Times, UM has a decided, though not overwhelming, advantage in fans in the Detroit area, and also in most of the State of Michigan. Only around the State capital of Lansing do you get an edge for MSU.

In addition to the preceding, Elvis sang in Michigan at Wings Stadium (a minor-league hockey arena, now named Wings Event Center) in Kalamazoo on October 21, 1976 and April 26, 1977; and the Saginaw County Event Center (now the Dow Event Center) in Saginaw on April 25 and May 3, 1977.

* Jimmy Hoffa. No, I don't know where Hoffa is buried. All I know for sure is that, when they demolished Giants Stadium in 2010, they found no human remains. Hoffa, who was born in Indiana but lived most of his life in and around Detroit, was last seen alive on July 30, 1975, sitting in his car in the parking lot of Machus' Red Fox.

A fine-dining establishment open from 1965 to 1996, the building is still there, occupied by an Italian restaurant named Andiamo's. 6676 Telegraph Road (U.S. Route 24) at Country Club Drive, Bloomfield, 22 miles northwest of Cadillac Square. As with most sites in Detroit's outer suburbs, getting there by public transportation is a hassle: In this case, you'd need 3 buses.

* Beaches. Michigan's State motto is, "If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look around you." It is surrounded on 3 sides by Great Lakes: Michigan to the west, Huron to the north and northeast, and Erie to the southeast. It has various protrusions into the water, and many islands, leading singer Gordon Lightfoot to say, "The islands and bays are for sportsmen."

Two areas of the State are renowned by beachgoers. South Haven, "the Catskills of the Midwest," is on the shore of Lake Michigan, 181 miles west of Cadillac Square. Mackinac Island (pronounced MACK-in-aw, not MACK-in-ack), over the Mackinac Bridge (the Mighty Mac), is closed to car traffic, and must be reached by ferry from Mackinac City. It is Michigan's Hamptons, its Cape May, its Martha's Vineyard. 289 miles northwest of Cadillac Square.

* Windsor. Across the Detroit River is Windsor, Ontario. Most Americans know it for Caesar's Windsor, one of 4 casinos in the area.  Like its namesakes in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, it has a Roman theme. It may be only 2 miles from downtown Detroit, but because it's in Canada, where they have things like sensible gun laws and national health care, it may feel like the other side of the world (if not Rome itself). And, because it's in Canada, you'll need a passport.

377 Riverside Drive East. There is bus service available -- less for Michiganders wanting to gamble, more for Windsorites wanting to go to Red Wings games and concerts -- and you can contact Transit Windsor at tw@city.windsor.on.ca.

The Wings' first home was actually in Windsor: They played their first season, 1926-27, at the Border Cities Arena, which still stands, and is now named Windsor Arena. Like a lot of old arenas (this one was built in 1924), it looks like a barn, and so is nicknamed The Barn. It seats only 4,400 people in its current configuration.

Its long-term tenants, the University of Windsor hockey team and the Windsor Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey League, now play elsewhere. The City of Windsor has approved a plan to tear it down and build the new building for Catholic Central High School on the site. 334 Wyandotte Street East, at McDougall Street.

The University of Windsor Lancers haven't been very successful in sports. Their greatest achievement is their football team winning the Yates Cup, for the championship of Ontario University Athletics, in 1975. The Yates Cup was founded in 1898, and is the oldest football trophy in North America.

Since 2008, the Spitfires have played at the WFCU Centre. No, that's not named for a radio station: Canadian radio stations' call letters always been with a C. The naming rights are held by the Windsor Family Credit Union. The Spitfires won the Memorial Cup, the championship of Canadian junior hockey, while playing there, in 2009 and '10, and one of the streets bordering is named Memorial Cu Way.

The Lancers also play hockey and basketball there. The Windsor Express play in the National Basketball League of Canada there. 8787 McHugh Street, 8 miles from downtown Detroit and 7 miles east of downtown Windsor. Bus 2 from there.

* Home Improvement. The 1991-99 ABC sitcom is easily the best-known TV show to have been set in Detroit, with the studio for the show-within-the show Tool Time being in the city and the Taylors' house in the suburbs. I don't think the exact town was ever specified, but a likely location is in Bloomfield Hills.

As far as I know, there were no location shots, not even in the episode in which the Taylors got to see the Lions' annual Thanksgiving game from a Silverdome skybox. So if you're looking for the Taylors' house, you're not going to find it -- if there was ever a house, not just a studio set, it was likely in or around Los Angeles. Other shows set in or around Detroit have included Martin, Freaks and Geeks, Sister, Sister, and 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.

Several films have been set, but not necessarily filmed, in Detroit. Axel Foley, Eddie Murphy's character in the Beverly Hills Cop films, was a Detroit police detective, but most of the film, including the Detroit scenes, was shot in Los Angeles. While RoboCop was set in Detroit, it was filmed in Dallas. (And you thought "Dallas sucks" was just a sports chant.)

Billy Crystal's movie about the 1961 home run record chase, 61*, used Tiger Stadium as a stand-in (with computer-generated help) for the original Yankee Stadium (since the 1973-76 renovation left it looking very little like it did in 1961). Other recent movies set in Detroit include Eminem's Roman à clef, 8 Mile; and Clint Eastwood's retired autoworker vs. gangs film Gran Torino.

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A visit to Detroit does not have to be a scary experience. These people love basketball -- especially "Dee-troit bas-ket-ball!" And, while they don't necessarily like the Yankees, they don't have a problem with Knick and Net fans. They love basketball, and they should be able to show you a good time.