The NBA brings the perfect nostalgia operation to Paris: Detroit Pistons-Chicago Bulls

The Accor Arena is located in Bercy, Paris, can accommodate around twenty thousand people and has wonderful acoustics that when not only the musicians come to play, but also the sound engineers are pleasantly amazed. The acoustics will count for little or nothing on the evening of January 19, 2023, this evening, what will count will be the spectacle offered, the visual one, on the parquet court positioned in the center of the Accor Arena in Bercy: basketball, Nba, Detroit Pistons versus Chicago Bullsthe perfect match, despite everything.

Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls have had it rough for years. The Pistons have qualified for the playoffs twice in recent years, the Bulls have fared better: five times, but only twice have they passed the first round: in 2012-2013 they were balled by Miami in the Conference semifinals, in 2014 -2015 from Cleveland. The Pistons have won 12 games and lost 35 this season and are in last place in the Eastern conference; the Bulls have racked up 20 victories, they have been defeated on 22 occasions: they are playing for access to the playoffs.

In short: the best is elsewhere and this despite the Bulls trio formed by Nikola Vucevic, Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan (who returns to the parquet today). Nevertheless there is no better match than Detroit-Chicago for the French public and not just the French, for the whole European public. And this regardless of the season that the two franchises are playing.

And there’s no better challenge because nostalgia is a rogue who likes a lot.

The NBA has had a data analysis center for a dozen years. However, the statistics of matches and players have little to do with it: those are amusement for enthusiasts and statisticians, an affair for almanacs and commentators. The interest is elsewhere, it concerns marketing and above all branding and market positioning.

And the positioning of the NBA brand on the European market, which is large – around eight million fans – growing, but not by much, is linked above all to a pool of people ranging from 35 to 55 years old. In short, people who remember by direct vision, or handed down by those who were older, that five years in which Pistons-Bulls was not a match, but the match. The one between the “Bad Boys” and the “Invinci-Bulls”, the one between Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan, between Joe Dumars and Scottie Pippen, Denis Rodman’s match first in Detroit and then in Chicago, always decisive in his own way in defense and his own way, that of getting on the nerves of his opponents.

Five years from 1989 to 1993: two Rings, two for Detroit, three for Chicago, a fixed appointment, face to face, in the Conference Finals. Only one passed, but whoever passed then won the title.

An appointment that is renewed today in Paris for the nostalgia match, a call that is always difficult to resist, especially for an audience such as the European one which greatly appreciated The last dancethe docuseries on Michael Jordan, who read Scottie Pippen’s autobiography “Unguarded” with excellent numbers, and who still numbers the Bulls in second place among the favorite franchises of the NBA (the Los Angeles Lakers are in first place) and in fifth place are the Pistons, despite the former not winning a Ring since 1998 and the latter since 2004. But anyhow, in the memory of Jordan and Thomas it is difficult to command.