Detroit Pistons All-Time list: Second-Team
By Tim Thielke
Guard: Dave Bing
Career stats: 20.3 points, 6.0 assists, 3.8 rebounds, 1.3 steals (9 seasons with Pistons)
Dave Bing’s playing days easily predate my fandom, so I can’t exactly pull up all sorts of memories. But it seems a bit of a travesty to have him all the way down on the second team. Along with Bob Lanier and Grant Hill, Bing rounds out the only superstars the Pistons ever had apart from their championship teams. And really, Isiah Thomas is probably the only other one the Pistons have ever had. The star power of the 2004 championship team gets severely underrated, but neither Ben Wallace nor Chauncey Billups quite qualified as “superstars” in my book.
Bing was a bit like the Barry Sanders or Calvin Johnson of the Pistons. He was an incredible player, toiling away on underwhelming teams. Yet he reeled in individual accolades hand over fist. In his nine seasons with the Pistons, he won a Rookie of the Year, a scoring title, two all-NBA first team honors (he finished third and fourth in MVP voting those years), he was a six-time all-star and even won the all-star MVP the following year as a Bullet (and finished sixth in MVP voting that season).
Next: George Yardley