Would the Pistons Bad Boys be able to beat the Lakers of now?

Well, if you want to play the injury card, I believe they were beating Magic's Lakers the year before until Isiah Thomas got hurt in Game 6 of the Finals (and Detroit was winning at that time), making him ineffective for the deciding Game 7. Just my opinion, but I see the Pistons winning 1 of those 2 games with a healthy Isiah.

But that's only if you wanna play the injury card.

Probably Kobe. Everyone else seems to have success at it. How tall is Bonzi Wells (6'5" I believe).

Probably not. But Daly was a good coach...I think he could adapt. No matter what rules ya use, Detroit still had enough big men to foul Shaq and be okay, someone to slow down Kobe and capable scorers. Pistons in 5.

 

Freak, good point about the increasing numbers of international players. Maybe the reason the great teams of previous years had whole rosters of really good players is not because of fewer teams relative to the supply good players. Maybe along with better fundamentals across players (your underclassman leaving argument perhaps), perhaps the primary reason was with fewer salary restrictions most of the really good players went to a few great teams (Lakers, Celtics, 6ers and Pistons of the 80's). This certainly was the case 3 decades ago with Boston having hall of famers <i> coming off the bench </i> and them being able to bribe their way into drafting Bill Russell.

It is true the Pistons would have to adjust how the play somewhat, but I am not sure they couldn't. Isiah, Dumars, VJ, Aguire and Edwards all had a ton of offensive skills, and Laimbeer had a great shot for a big man. Dumars, Rodman, Laimbeer and Sally were good defenders in their own right whether they played dirty or not. I don't think they would have had to play like the Bad Boys to mop of the teams of today.

Freak I think you are understimating how good those Detriot role players are. I agree if any current Laker could get PT it would be Horry, but he would not get much (over the defensive and rebounding freak Rodman?, over Laimbeer who has his outside range and is a better rebounder?). And yes, based on the way Rodman could play Barkley or Malone in their heyday (each probably a smidgen tougher to defend than Duncan), I have no doubt he would be tougher on Duncan than Horry could be. Sally was a good defender of post players off the bench too. Also, the size of small and power forwards were not that much different then, and Aguire and Dantley were beating them (Aguire could create problems for the ultra quick hall of famer in James Worthy 6'9"). Just like Barkley consistently did just a couple of years ago at 6'4", or that now reduced to a 40 year old small forward version of Micheal Jordan 6'6" does today against taller forwards. Aguire would destroy either Fox or Horry IMO. Finally, I think there is a huge difference between Fisher and VJ. VJ would go off on good defenders trying everything to stop him, Fisher just waits for the open look. Plenty of guys in the NBA could do Fisher's job of efficiently knocking down the open loook (certainly all 3 of the Detriot guards could), but no one in the league off the bench could match VG firepower.