There are only two NBA Finals series in which Kobe Bryant didn’t average at least 24 points. The first one is from the 1999-2000 series when the Black Mamba was only 21 years old. The second instance came in 2004 against the underdog Detroit Pistons, and it was at the hands of Tayshaun Prince.
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The Olympic gold medalist was on the Knuckleheads podcast when he told Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles a true story from that season. Prince was born and raised in Compton, California so he used the off-days before the 2004 NBA Finals to reconnect with his roots.
Dominguez High School, Tayshaun’s old stomping grounds, invited the NBA player to speak to their students. But there was no hometown love for him at his alma mater. Tayshaun Prince recalled on the podcast,
“So after I speak, I open it up for questions. First question was…’Who on y’all team gonna guard Kobe?’“
It seems the kids at his high school were not watching Pistons games. In game 2 of the ECF, Tayshaun had chased Reggie Miller down in the final possession to swat away his game-tying layup. It was a “blocked by James” moment, but one that the kids in Compton had clearly not registered yet. Humbly, Prince answered their question about the Kobe Bryant assignment.
“So I was like, ‘That’s gonna be my responsibility.’ The whole gym laughed. The whole gym,” recalled the 2004 NBA champion. “It’s my high school, but it’s LA though. It’s all Lakers. Forget which school you went to and all that, it’s all Lakers.“
For Tayshaun, it wasn’t insulting because he understood the allegiance his high school had to the Purple and Gold. Instead, he took it as motivation. He stated, “I got nothing to lose. All this, nobody expecting nothing.”
After all, everybody was expecting the Lakers to have an easy series. They had much more star-power than the Pistons and were coming off their dominant three-peat. For many, the series was over before it began. But coming in as the underdog motivated Tayshaun, who had a strategy to effectively guard Bryant. The four-time All-Defensive selection explained,
“Limit getting him to the free-throw line, limit the easy transition, getting to the rim and all that. If I make him take the tough contested two’s, then I can live with that. And that’s what I was able to do throughout that series.”
Prince was a defensive specialist who had 3 inches on Bryant. He used his length, physicality and speed to keep him out of the paint, forcing him into uncomfortable spots. In Game 3, Prince didn’t even let Kobe Bryant convert a basket until the third quarter.
Bryant shot 17.4% from deep and 38.1% from the field across that series. Prince and the Pistons’ energetic defense also caused him to turn the ball over three times per game. And this was just 2 years from a Finals where Kobe averaged 26 points while shooting over 50% from the field and from beyond the arc.
To make that player struggle for 5 games is a testament to Prince’s defensive prowess. That’s why his head coach, Larry Brown proclaimed during the 2004 NBA Finals, “You can’t guard better than Tayshaun guarded.”
