32 current and former players entered the Detroit Pistons all-time fan favorite bracket last week, and after a week of voting, one is left standing!
A week ago we asked you to give us some of your favorite all-time Detroit Pistons players. We used that information to determine seeding in the tournament, and it was no surprise who was at the top.
The top ten seeds were dominated by players from the Bad Boys and the Goin’ to Work eras.
We endured voting controversies, two impromptu votes, and a plethora of seeding arguments, but we finally arrived at a championship. the #1 seeded Chauncey Billups versus #2 seed Isiah Thomas.
One thing that was often lost on people was that we were determining who was more adored by the fans, not who was objectively a better player. While sometimes those can go hand in hand, it didn’t always apply in the tournament.
For example, a player like Jason Maxiell (who was shockingly absent from the bracket all together) was adored by the fans, but wasn’t better than a lot of his teammates. Because of this, he could’ve hypothetically made a decent run.
At the end of the day, a Billups versus Thomas matchup for the championship was inevitable. That’s always what it was going to come down to.
With a majority of our voters never having seen Thomas play with their own eyes, it was easy to imagine how the vote would have gone.
Within the fist 20 minutes of the poll being open, Billups held a significant advantage with 55 percent of the vote.
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After several hours of clawing his way back into it, Thomas’ fandom had gotten him back into the race. It was dead even at 50 percent for a while.
Eventually after neither player could take the lead, Billups eventually reclaimed it. With the clock winding down, it finally became official.
Billups won, and was officially declared the franchises’ all-time favorite player!
With 51 percent of the vote, he was finally able to pull away.
Both he and Thomas are more than just franchise icons. They’re NBA legends. Three championships between them and they each took down historic Lakers teams in the process.
Even if you don’t put Billups as your number one all-time Piston favorite, he’s certainly going to be in the top five. Whether it was him or Thomas that won, it’s a result that we can all live with.
A quick thank you to everyone who participated, your votes and engagement made this a ton of fun, and we’ll be sure to do something else like this in the future.
Congratulations to Chauncey Billups!