The Detroit Pistons knocked on the NBA championship door in 1987. In 1988, they beat on it. And to borrow a motivational phrase from former Houston Oilers’ football coach Bum Phillips, the 1989 Detroit Pistons were the team that kicked the door in.
Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of sports history articles aimed at preserving the best moments of the modern sports era, from 1976 to the present. The focus is team sports—college & pro basketball and football, major league baseball and hockey.
This article offers a snapshot of 1989 sports, a year that saw an amazing sequence of events unfold for Michigan basketball, the World Series marred by an earthquake and Wayne Gretzky changing sides