Tales From The Detroit Pistons: With Reflections Of Rick Mahorn And Joe Dumars

by Perry A. Farrell

The Bad Boys—a collection of incredible basketball talent revered in Detroit and despised throughout the rest of the National Basketball Association. They were back-to-back NBA champions and the monkey (or 600-pound gorilla) that Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls had to get off their backs before they could assume the NBA’s throne. In Rick Mahorn’s Tales from the Detroit Pistons, the former Bad Boy shares stories that cover all the key characters, including Isiah Thomas, Bill Laimbeer, Joe Dumars, John Salley, Vinny Johnson, Dennis Rodman, and coach Chuck Daly. Mahorn discusses the wars with the Bulls, Celtics, Knicks, and championship battles with the Lakers and Blazers. The book also examines the sorry state of the franchise before the two titles, their attempts to recapture their NBA magic with Grant Hill and Jerry Stackhouse, and the recent run of success that Dumars is having as the team’s general manager. Mahorn’s role as color analyst for Pistons’ radio broadcasts has kept him in the loop as Dumars has added players like Rip Hamilton, Rasheed Wallace, and Darko Milicic, along with coach Larry Brown, over the past few seasons. Sharing stories from his playing and announcing days is a part of what makes Rick Mahorn’s Tales from the Detroit Pistons special.

190 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 2004

Reviews

[Ernie Bowman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tales from the Detroit Pistons by Perry Farrell is maybe the very definition of a niche book. The author is a sports writer for the Detroit Free Press and compiled this book based largely on conversations and interviews he has had in the course of his work with specific members of the Detroit Pistons. I was drawn to the book because it advertised itself as featuring “recollections from Joe Dumars and Rick Mahorn.” Dumars is my favorite player of all time and every old-school Piston fan knows Mahorn is usually worth listening to, if only for the entertainment of it all. It was a disappointing read. Shallow and surface level, Farrell never gets beyond the fluff stuff of Bad Boys reporting. I was hoping for a book along the lines of the documentary ESPN did on the team but this was nothing like that. You would have to be a truly hard core fan to make it worth your while reading this one, and even then I wouldn’t really recommend it.