Top 5 season openers in Detroit Pistons history

1997-98 versus the Washington Wizards

Looking at the raw score from this game tells a pretty unremarkable tale.

The Pistons soundly defeated the Wizards 79-92 and neither of these teams were the talk of the NBA at the time, so this was really a non-event.

However, this manages to weasel its way into the top five purely because it features Grant Hill doing Grant Hill things.

Hill is often at the top of the list for all-time NBA “what if?” players, and it’s not hard to see why when games like this were a regular occurrence.

He had 25 points on 53 percent shooting, 12 rebounds and 8 assists and completely outclassed the Chris Webber led Wizards.

The Wizards pretty much emptied their bench in this game, playing 12 players.

These 12 players included legendary names like Darvin Ham, God Shammgod and future NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons, Ben Wallace, who played just three minutes.

This Wizards team is actually kinda interesting in that it featured three players who would eventually play for Detroit (Wallace, Webber and Ham).

As for the Pistons, we need to give a huge shoutout to Joe Dumars in the second-last season of his career playing 10 minutes as a starter and scoring 3 points.

I’d also like to mention Aaron McKie, who went 1 of 9 from the field (0 of 2 from deep) in his 24 minutes.

Keep shooting your shot, Aaron.