This year’s Detroit Pistons are challenging the1979-80 team coached by Dick Vitale, for the worst record in franchise history.
So far this season, the Detroit Pistons have been competitive, but not winning many games. Their current record of 3-10 gives them a .231 winning percentage.
If they continue at this pace, Detroit will finish in a 72-game schedule at 17-55. That is pretty bad, but it would only be the second-worst record in Pistons history.
The top honor (if one can call it that) for the rottenness record would still be held by the 1979-80 Detroit Pistons. In an 82-game season, they went 16-66 for a (shudder) .195 winning percentage.
How bad is that? Extrapolated to football, it would be like the Detroit Lions going 3-13.
Despite the horrid record, the ’79-80 Pistons were an interesting group. Its owner and two players were future Naismith Hall of Famers. It also had a former No. 1 overall draft pick and a couple of players who were Detroit mainstays for many years.
And coaching them was someone who has become the most famous basketball personality in the country.
DIck Vitale and 1979-80 Detroit Pistons
Dick Vitale’s start in the Motor City came at the collegiate level. He had been an assistant at Rutgers, when he was hired to be the head coach at the University of Detroit.
He was a great success, going 78-30 in four years with the Titans. In 1977, he defeated eventual NCAA champion Marquette in the regular season, and reached the Sweet 16.
Vitale’s success was noticed by the local NBA team. In 1978, Pistons owner Bill Davidson was looking for a new coach and decided to tap the popular local college guy.
Pistons fans were ecstatic: Many put ‘ReVitale-zed’ bumper stickers on their cars.
But not only did Dick Vitale have no NBA experience, he was only seven years removed from coaching high school in New Jersey.
He was everything you would think ‘Dickie V’ would be as coach: Passionate, funny, aggressive and very talkative on the court.
But it did not start well, and then it got worse.
Dick Vitale’s time as Detroit Pistons coach
For his first NBA experience, Vitale brought with him three of his University of Detroit players, John Long, Dennis Boyd and Terry Tyler.
He had a Hall of Fame center in Bob Lanier, and one of the best passers in the league in Kevin Porter Sr. (he averaged a then-NBA record 13.4 assists) and solid shooters in M.L. Carr and Chris Ford.
They could score, but defense was a bit of an issue.
Despite the talent, Detroit lost its first five games in the 1978-79 season and Vitale had to be hospitalized for stress, according to Blue Collar Blueprint. It never got much better. They were 12-28 at their lowest point. Vitale was able to go 18-24 the rest of the way, to most likely save his job.
He finished with a 30-52 record.
It had been a bad debut, and things were about to get worse, due to one of the top, if not the best, executives in NBA history.
How Red Auerbach ended Dick Vitale’s Detroit Pistons career
One of the top scorers in the 1970s in the NBA was Bob McAdoo. He was basically the James Harden of his time.
In the summer of 1979, M.L. Carr signed as a free agent with the Boston Celtics. Having drafted a promising forward named Larry Bird, Boston general manager Red Auerbach was looking to get rid of McAdoo, who at 28 he thought was starting to physically wear down .
Auerbach was a living legend even then. He had won seven NBA titles in eight years (take that Jordan and LeBron!) as a coach/GM and then won three more as the Celtics general manager.
Under the free agent rules at the time, the Pistons were owed compensation for Carr. The Pistons asked for McAdoo.
Auerbach negotiating with Vitale and Davidson was the equivalent of toddlers in a ring with a python.
They brokered a deal where the Pistons got McAdoo. Detroit just had to fork over two first-round pick they held in the 1980 draft, and also count this deal as proper compensation for losing Carr.
The result could be called a fleecing by the wily cigar-smoking Auerbach, but that would be an insult to fleece. A total catastrophe would be a more apt phrase.
McAdoo was about as happy in Detroit as James Harden was at the end in Houston, and he played like it. He averaged a career-low 26.1 points in 58 games, and played in only 16 games the following season.
By March of 1981, the Pistons were so unhappy with McAdoo that they simply cut him. He went on to win several NBA titles as a valuable reserve on the Los Angeles Lakers.
What did the Celtics do with those two draft picks? Auerbach fleeced another poor team. He traded the picks to the Golden State Warriors, who used them to draft two players who made little impact.
In return, Auerbach got Robert Parish and Kevin McHale, who combined with Bird for the NBA top frontline of the 1980s.
But going into the 1979-80 season, things seemed to be looking up for Detroit.
They had one of the top scorers in the league, one of the top center’s in Lanier (in an era when having good center’s meant something) and Long and Tyler seemed to be turning into promising players.
Everything was great … until the games actually began being played.
The 1979-80 Detroit Pistons as the wheels came off
It appeared the Detroit Pistons were on the right track. In front of an energetic crowd at the Pontiac Silverdome, Detroit opened the season with a 114-105 win over the Indiana Pacers.
McAdoo scored 23, Bob Lanier and John Shumate each had 20 and rookie Greg Kelser (yes, the current broadcaster of Pistons games) added 18 points in his NBA debut.
Indeed, it looked like the team was ReVitale-zed. The Pistons got off to a 3-1 start and were 4-3 after knocking off the defending Eastern Conference champion Washington Bullets (now Wizards).
Detroit then went into a slump, losing the next five games to fall to 4-8 on the season. Owner Bill Davidson then made the fateful decision on November 8, 1979. He drove to Vitale’s house and personally fired him in Vitale’s kitchen.
Assistant Richie Adubato was named interim head coach.
Adubato would go on to a long career in the NBA, as well as the WNBA. He eventually became a head coach in Dallas and Orlando after leaving Detroit. He also made three WNBA finals with the New York Liberty.
But, at the time, he was just thought of as Vitale’s guy. Before coming to the Pistons, he had been a Division III college coach.
As far as the players were concerned, the firing of Vitale was the equivalent of raising the white flag.
Detroit went out in Adubato’s debut and beat the Philadelphia 76ers, who would win the Eastern Conference that season. They then lost the next four games.
The Pistons simply could not get out of a losing rut when things went bad.
With the playoffs a dream, new general manager Jack McCloskey began trading his veterans for what he could get. Jim McElroy, a starter, got traded and Lanier was sent to the Bucks in February, 1980, ending the career in Detroit of one of its greatest players.
With nothing to play for, and now a lot less talented, the wheels came off at the end.
Detroit had a bad, but not awful, record of 13-37 in February, 1980.
The Pistons proceeded to finish the season losing 29 of its last 32 games, ending the year on a 14-game losing streak and finishing with a franchise record worst 16-66 record.
There was no draft lottery back then. Detroit would have automatically received the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA draft, but they had traded it away in the McAdoo deal.
So, Pistons fans did not even have that consolation for suffering through such a wretched season.
Detroit Pistons & Vitale rebirth
Dick Vitale had been in charge of personnel as well as coach, so, a month after he was let go, Davidson hired Jack McCloskey as general manager. ‘Trader Jack’ would eventually build the Pistons into NBA champions by the end of the decade.
But it took a while. Detroit did not do much better under new coach Scotty Robertson the following season, going 22-60. McCloskey then drafted Isiah Thomas and Kelly Tripucka, and the Pistons were on the road back to respectability and eventual championships.
As for Vitale, he was intent on getting back into coaching. However, since he was let go with the NBA and college seasons already under way, he would have to wait a few months to see what openings there would be.
Since he was not doing anything, his wife Lorraine encouraged Vitale to accept an offer to be an analyst on a new sports cable network called ESPN. At least until he lined up another coaching position.
On December 5, 1979 he called a DePaul-Wisconsin game. The rest is history. ‘Dickie V’ was born.
Vitale never coached again, but he has done over 1,000 games on TV and is one of the most famous personalities in sports.
To be worse than the 79-80 Pistons on a percentage basis, the current team would have to go 13-59, which would be awful to live through. Even for the Tanking for Cade Cunningham crew, that seems a bit cruel.
Detroit can win some games and still have a good chance at the No. 1 draft pick. They don’t have to be like ’79-80.
If there is any lesson that can be drawn from the 1979-80 Pistons, it’s that things are not as bad as it seems at the time. By 1984, Detroit was back in the playoffs.
As for Vitale, turns out the best thing that every happened to him, was having Bill Davidson in his kitchen.