Ben Wallace signs with Bulls

by David Pincus
2006-07-04

Ben Wallace said that his heart was with Detroit, that he wanted to remain in the Motor City when it was all said and done. It turns out that what goes in your pockets means more than what’s in your heart, since Wallace signed a 4-yr $60 million contract with the Chicago Bulls.

The deal was 20% larger than the $48 million offer the Pistons proposed. Wallace will have to make several trips to Detroit next year as the two teams are in the same division.

Now it’s very easy from the outside to say that Wallace should’ve stayed in Detroit if he really and truly had his heart there. God knows I would’ve settled for one-thousandth of his contract. But the separation between what Chicago and Detroit offered him was far greater than what the Red Sox and Yankees offered Johnny Damon, and the most people let him off the hook.

Still, Wallace’s ambitions will never lead him to the success he had with the Pistons. With Detroit he was the 5th scoring option; all he had to do was rebound and play defense, which he’s great at. The Pistons had Billups, Hamilton, Prince and Rasheed to score ahead of him. The Bulls don’t exactly have a coherent offense, what with their scorer-by-committee approach. Wallace won’t help them as much as he did with the Pistons.

If he does have success in Chicago, he’ll be the first bigman in a while to be productive after a large deal. Carlos Boozer and Kenyon Martin could’ve helped LeBron and Kidd win championships, but the opted out of their deals to get big cash. Yet (and this goes for Wallace too) they probably could’ve made just as much money with their previous teams, since the accolades they’d receive would bring on sponsors.

Remember that Nokia commercial Ben had last year (which was awful because the ad was shot in the stadium where the Heat play, which made the fact that Wallace a Pistons jersey on ridiculous, but anyway…) well he isn’t going to get one this year if the Bulls don’t do better.

As for Detroit, the best starting lineup in the League has been broken up. Perhaps a healthy Antonio McDyess could fill in? If not, the Pistons will have trouble filling in for Big Ben. An equally is as large issue is the other four Pistons. Chauncey Billups is a free agent next season. He deserves a big deal, but knows that Detroit can’t give it to him. So will he stay with a significantly slimmer contract or abandon Detroit like Ben did?

In truth, this is the biggest flaw with a team that has as many key components as the Pistons. There’s no way Joe Dumars could afford to keep them all around, and after losing Ben Wallace, it appears he might have trouble keeping any of them.

The Pistons best years are behind them, and it can only get worse. Unless McDyess or someone else can fill in for the back-to-back-to-back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year awards Wallace provided, they won’t be a great threat to Miami anymore. In the end, it could be Darko Millicic who gets the last laugh, as he’d probably be starting with them had they kept him around.