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They were a product of a more physical era that changed the Bulls and changed the game. Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn just instigated a little more. Not to say everybody was doing it, but yeah, everybody was doing it. You'll see Jordan face-palm Reggie Miller. You’ll see Kevin McHale clothes-line Kurt Rambis. You’ll see Julius Erving and Larry Bird choking each other. How is that a problem? Go watch one of those old-school NBA montages on Facebook. "With them being more mentally dominant than we were, they knew as soon as we started complaining they had us," Bulls forward Horace Grant said in the documentary. Chicago might have won an NBA championship sooner, given Jordan was in his prime, if not for Detroit. On the repeat run, the Pistons went 15-5 against the Pacers, Knicks, Bulls and Blazers. In 1988-89, Detroit went 15-2 in the playoffs while mowing through the Celtics, Bucks, Bulls and Lakers. The "Last Dance" showed again what doesn’t get talked about enough: The back-to-back championship teams were good enough to beat anybody at the time - and not just with their elbows.Ĭonsider the two NBA championship playoff runs. You can still appreciate how good the "Bad Boys" were. They were the dominant two-time NBA champion in 1988-90 that gets lost between the Lakers-Celtics rivalry of the 1980s and the Bulls’ run in the 1990s. That takes away from what Detroit really was.