Ben Wallace sees his number retired in Detroit

The Orlando Magic didn’t really have to trade Ben Wallace to the Detroit Pistons in 2000, and yet they went ahead with it. The goal was to give Grant Hill as much money as they could, under the cap, in a sign and trade deal. Orlando had the available cap space to sign Hill outright, but when the NBA’s best swingman agrees to come to your team, you tend to want to go out of your way to accommodate his bank account.

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As a result, Ben Wallace will forever be known as a Detroit Piston legend. The center was honored by the Pistons on Saturday night with a jersey retirement ceremony, celebrating the big man’s four All-Star appearances and four Defensive Player of the Year awarding during his six-year run with the franchise.

Most importantly, the retirement ceremony honored Wallace’s role on the 2004 championship Pistons. A team that was stitched together in an unorthodox fashion by general manager Joe Dumars, with Big Ben in the lead role. From MLive:

“Coming here, playing the way I play, having my type of game, for somebody to believe in you, say you could lead this team, that was amazing,” Wallace said. “We all know that you don’t usually build your team around a defensive player. Defensive players help you, but you usually build your team around an offensive powerhouse.

“For me just being an average player at the time, and them looking at me and looking at my game, and telling me something I couldn’t foresee in myself, it was special.”

Wallace was far from “an average player,” to those who were paying attention at the time.

He was cut by the Pistons after his first training camp as a pro, in 1997, with then-coach M.L. Carr understandably trying to make the 6-7 center into what would become a Bruce Bowen-type. Of course, the Celtics also cut Bruce Bowen a year later.

Wallace went on to work his way into the rotation with the Washington Wizards, thriving in his second season as a defensive presence. He wasn’t quite the rebounder he would later become, but by his third season with Washington he had developed into one of the NBA’s top reserve big men.

This hardly mattered to the Wiz, as they saw scoring center Ike Austin as a missing piece of sorts, and dealt Wallace to Orlando for Austin and his out-sized contract and waistband. Ike and the nation’s capital never did much together, but Wallace blossomed with a supposed rebuilding team in Orlando – nearly leading the squad to the playoffs while averaging 8.2 rebounds and a block and a half in 24 minutes a game – starting 81 contests.

That Magic team was never supposed to last, however, as general manager John Gabriel had designs on a clear cap and the acquisition of Tim Duncan, Grant Hill, or Tracy McGrady during the team’s free agent turn in 2000. When the Magic snared McGrady and learned it could offer Hill a few more million if the Pistons would take money back in a sign-and-trade, Gabriel didn’t think twice before sending Wallace and Chucky Atkins to Detroit.

Afforded more minutes, Wallace became a star. He nearly won the league’s rebounding title in his first year (Dikembe Mutombo took the title, barely, while chasing around Allen Iverson’s misses for half a year) prior to winning in that realm for two years following. He led the league in blocks and rebounds in his second season with the team, while doing admirable work both elbowing his way through a prickly Eastern Conference path, and getting to know Shaquille O’Neal’s armpits during the 2004 NBA Finals.

His Pistons would make six consecutive Eastern Conference finals’ during that run, two Finals, and take one championship. Prior to leaving Detroit as a free agent in 2006, in an ill-fated partnership with the Chicago Bulls, Wallace would re-define the center position for a new generation. A generation that noted that the big man in the middle didn’t even have to be taller than his power forward, and that it was possible to contest shots while still working one’s way back to the defensive glass. That it didn’t have to be an either/or affair.

As a result, teams in 2016 are forever looking for a Ben Wallace-type to build around. Even with scores rising ever higher, finding a defensive anchor is still paramount, as nobody wants to make the mistake the Magic made in the summer of 2000.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops