Former Piston Lindsey Hunter shares 2004 NBA championship memories
FOX 2 - "The Detroit Pistons have just shocked the Los Angeles Lakers," said ABC/ESPN play-by-play announcer Al Michaels in 2004.
The backstory:
After the confetti cleanup, there was a sea of people at Hart Plaza, shoulder-to-shoulder to celebrate the 2004 Pistons.
A group of guys who shocked the world in what is remembered as a "five-game sweep."
From the FOX 2 archives: "This Pistons celebration kicked off early this morning with a parade down Jefferson. One of the shots that will live on in history. Detroit police are telling us — it’s true — a million people were there."
A million people were there, but if you ask any Metro Detroiter, they’ll tell you, ‘I was there, too.’
Former Pistons guard Lindsey Hunter who was on that championship team, and he joined Brandon Hudson and FOX 2 Sports Director Dan Miller.
Brandon: "Lindsey, how you doing?"
Lindsey Hunter: "Doing pretty good. Doing pretty good."
Brandon: "I want you to take me back to your feeling that night — Game Five — when you guys wrapped it up and beat the Lakers.
Lindsey Hunter: "I can tell you that entire day was surreal, and it was really electric. Even our practice. We really didn’t do much that day because it was tons of media everywhere.
"That practice after we got out of there and went home and prepared for the game. we came back to the arena. It was almost like we expected something special to happen. That's how everyone approached it. I just didn’t feel like they had a chance. None of us did. None of us did.
"We tell this story all the time — Elden Campbell, Darvin Ham and Ben Wallace, and Rasheed — we were all in the steam room talking before the series started, and we were like — ‘They’re not better than us.’ We ran down the team (roster) and we were like — besides Kobe and Shaq, we were like, that’s it. We were like, we win everywhere else. We're like, give Kobe and Shaq theirs. We win everywhere else and it wasn’t close. Elden Campbell sat there and was like — 'Yeah, they shouldn’t win a game.'"
Brandon: "Game Five wraps up, where are you in the Palace?"
Dan Miller: "I was in the media section, sitting next to (ex-Detroit Mayor) Kwame Kilpatrick, who had come down and sat in the media section — just kind of hanging right there. I was sitting next to him.
"You’re working your way down to the court and there’s just a mob scene down there. They throw up the ropes, we couldn’t get inside the ropes. They wouldn’t let us in and you were supposed to be let in. There was something on the credential, we didn't have some sticker we were supposed to have or whatever.
"God bless Jerry the Pistons' security guy. He reaches through this crowd — grabs me, looks at his security guy and says 'He and his camera guy are fine — let's go.' He had so many things to worry about at that point. He let us in there to get interviews and talk to these guys, feeling what it was like at the Palace in the midst of all that celebration."
The Source: Information for this report came from an interview with Lindsey Hunter and Dan Miller.
FOX 2's Brandon Hudson with former Pistons star Lindsey Hunter.
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