(no subject)
I am not usually much for team pride, for that cultish phenomenon of spectator sports. I didn't much care when USC won the Rose Bowl and I root for the Tigers, but without much hope. And, I confess, I did not watch the NBA Championship. But, this time, I felt it. I heard parts of two of the games while eating at Leo's Coney Island. And as Rosie and I walked the streets of Royal Oak last night, we saw people lined up to get into bars, folks crowded around their TVs at the hair salon like in the armageddon movies, the game on up in the 3rd floor luxury apartments. We heard DEFENSE chanting from the bars, and fans walking by with their inflatable distraction sticks. Later, we knew Detroit had won when we could hear the drunken fools yelling and honking on Woodward Avenue, outside Rosie's apartment. (I was subsequently forbidden to drive home with these crazies.) I may not have been watching the games, but I felt the excitement that prevaded the city all week, and erupted in celebration last night. So while I'm sorry for the Lakers and for all you folks out in LA, I have to say, Detroit enjoyed the victory more than LA would have. We needed it more here....And today, I'm proud of my city. This dump, this empty shell, this boarded up ghost-town has something to be proud of today.
PISTONS PRIDE WRAPPED IN DETROIT PRIDE
BY ROCHELLE RILEY
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
With each game, each traded basket, it became clear that Detroit winning the NBA Championship means more than the L.A. Lakers winning the NBA Championship.
Fans always say that. But in Detroit, it's true.
We need this more.
Here in Detroit, a city that gets dumped on by people who cannot find Motown on a map, a city that gets trashed by a late-night talk show host no one heard of a year ago, a city that needs miracles to survive, we deserve our miracles, divine and man-made.
Victories count twice here.
We don't have Academy Awards and streams of glitterati walking red carpets at movie premieres. Ben Wallace is our glitterati. Chauncey Billups is our bling-bling.
For those of us for whom work is a daily chore, we save our adoration for sports heroes, not aging actors in sunglasses who date their daughter's friends.
We love our sports heroes like moms love their son's football teams. We wanna bake 'em pies and make sure they wear ties when they go to formal dinners. We want others to love our heroes, too.
Showing Detroit off to America, to corporate America, to tourist America, means taking advantage of every opportunity. The NBA championship is one of the greatest opportunities to say "Hey, look at us!"
Here in Detroit, we root for the music. We root for demolishing abandoned buildings. We even root for casinos if they bring in enough tax dollars to help the public schools. We root for positives because we know that all some people know is negative. People still joke about riots that happened here 37 years ago.
Detroiters cannot afford to forget that we have the nation's attention. Every chance we get, we need to remind America, and ourselves, that good things, big things, happen here. And not just on the ice. In America, Hooptown has a larger population than Hockeytown.
We need basketball.
Basketball is the sport of driveways and schoolyards. It is what aging lawyers play in gyms at lunch. We want America to see themselves in our players, to love our players the way we do. Love 'em or leave 'em alone. I was so angered to hear our beloved Ben say he wore his hair in braids in L.A. and only released the 'fro in Motown because people taunted him.
Detroiters want to fit in -- and remind people to accept them the way they are: people who dance in techno clubs, picnic in parks and who walk into a downtown Borders to pick up a copy of "The Known World" -- just like anywhere else.
Detroiters want people to see them in the Pistons.
We don't want people to stop bowing to L.A., La-La Land, Hollywood, Tinseltown, home of $20-million stars and 24-hour club-hopping. We just want people to bow a little to Detroit and to a work ethic that doesn't have to be pretty as long as it builds championships like Detroit builds cars.
Why is this NBA championship so damned important?
Because our need in Detroit is greater. Here, a big victory is big whether it's a new corporation moving to town or a sports team winning.
For Detroit, this NBA championship means everything.