Keep That Motor Running: Fans Chase Pistons

The Detroit Pistons returned in triumph Wednesday as about 2,000 broom-toting, screaming fans helped them celebrate their first National Basketball Assn. championship.

Standing in a humid drizzle, the crowd chanted, “Bad Boys! Bad Boys!’--the team’s adopted nickname--as the private jet touched down at Willow Run Airport. Not even jet engines could drown out the chants as the jet, Round Ball One, rolled to a stop.

Players walked along the cordoned-off crowd, grasping hands, high-fiving and exchanging greetings. But they had to scramble back to the plane when the crowd broke through the cordon and swarmed toward the jet.

The aircraft’s engines were restarted and the jet taxied several hundred feet away so the Pistons could get on a waiting bus.

But the players didn’t mind.

“There’s no feeling like this,” center James Edwards said. “I’ve seen how my friends are after winning the world championship, and now we’ve got one.”

“I don’t know how I feel,” said forward John Salley. “It’s hit us, but it hasn’t hit us. We’re champions now. We came in with the right attitude, stayed modest, stayed humble.

“We’re the Bad Boys.”

The Pistons completed their sweep of the Lakers on Tuesday night, 105-97.