Detroit never has been, and never will be, a basketball town.
At times, it can be a great football town. Witness the multiple sell-outs at Ford Field for a team that has been, by far, the worst in the NFL for the past 10 years.
Detroit is also a city that calls itself Hockeytown, the ultimate in metropolitan-wide hubris. But it’s hard to deny that status, what with Joe Louis Arena tightly packed on most nights.
The true old-timers will tell you that Detroit is none of those—that it’s a baseball town, and one of the best in America. Again, hard to deny, when 30,000+ file through the turnstiles in a summer when practically half the town is out of work.
Baseball goes farther back in history than any of the sports in Detroit; we’re talking the late-19th century, for goodness sakes.
Detroit—the city of Cobb and Heilmann and Greenberg and Gehringer. Of Kaline and Cash and Lolich and Horton. And so on.
Detroit could be any of those three things: Football city, Hockeytown, baseball city.
What it is not, is much of a basketball burg.
The Pistons, ever since landing o ...
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Article written by Greg Eno
After 53 Years, Detroit Still Lags as a Pro Basketball Town
December 15th, 2010 by Greg Eno Leave a reply »
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