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The first roadblock to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls dynasty was the ‘Bad Boys’ Detroit Pistons. The Pistons knocked out the Bulls three years in a row and they swept them two times. And Dennis Rodman once revealed how inseparable the Pistons really were together.

The Pistons were one of the contenders in the Eastern Conference in the late 80s. They first had to match up against the Boston Celtics, who they beat after two meetings in the Eastern Conference Finals. Then they advanced to three straight NBA Finals, and they won two out of those three in 1989 and 1990.

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And in each of those runs, the Pistons had to face the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan. The Pistons were the toughest matchup that Jordan had to face until then and they were very hard to beat. Jordan could only get past the Pistons after meeting them for the fourth time in the playoffs.

The Detroit Pistons were one team where the core stayed the same for a long time. John Salley, Isiah Thomas, Rick Mahorn, Dennis Rodman, and Bill Laimbeer were there for the entire run. And they were like a family.

Dennis Rodman says the Bad Boys were like a family

Rodman was drafted the by Pistons in the 1986 draft. He was an integral part of the Pistons. He explained how close the Pistons team was. Rodman said, “I came from Oklahoma, I was in a type of family environment, coming from the projects we went to Oklahoma. For three years, it was family oriented”.

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“When I went to Detroit, Isiah, Joe Dumars, and Chuck Daly embedded to me, ‘You know what, this is about a family, we wanna win. We gotta stick together, we’re gonna do this together…’ We were so damn close, we should be having s*x, that’s how close we were… You know what I mean”.

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The Pistons were a very tight-knit group, and that was one of the reasons they were so successful. Eventually, age started catching up to the Pistons, and they were out of title contention.

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But they remain as one of the few teams that were able to beat the Chicago Bulls and Jordan in the playoffs.