Prince's block: His all-time best?

Picking Tayshaun Prince’s best block is like debating the best article of the Bill of Rights – they’re all somewhere between tremendous and outstanding, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and without any one of them the body of work would be less than it otherwise is.

But the one he had on Hedo Turkoglu to save the Game 5 win – and the series - over Orlando on Tuesday night ranks ahead of the Reggie Miller block for me. Oh, it’ll never replace the Miller block on the highlight reel because of the more spectacular nature of that epic block, coming out of nowhere to swat a layup from behind.

But the unexpected nature of the Miller block was partly on Reggie’s end, too. He gathered his steps to make sure he’d be going off the right foot at a safe speed to make an easy layup. He didn’t know Prince was coming from behind until it was too late. The wonder of the block on Prince’s part wasn’t that he swatted it away at the end of the play, it was that he made up so much ground to get there.

But the Turkoglu block … wow. There was nothing surprising about it to Turkoglu. Except that anybody could cover that much ground and block a dunk – a dunk! – at the rim without making body contact or coming close to a foul. Really, it’s amazing that Prince blocked that shot so cleanly that nobody – not Turkoglu, not Stan Van Gundy, not the folks sitting back in Orlando with blue face paint – could grumble about the non-call.

The day before the game, after practice, Prince was asked whether his block of Miller in 2004 or the game-winning basket he made in Game 4 at Orlando last Saturday was more special to him. Here’s what he said:

“I’ll take the block any time of the day. It’s more special. I don’t care if the block was one of 82 games or the last game of 82 or in the playoffs. That’s more important than anything to me. The satisfaction to get a defensive stop to win the game, that’s what’s more gratifying than hitting the game-winning shot in my eyes. If you get a huge defensive stop to ice the game, that makes you feel a lot better.”

He must be floating on Cloud Nine today then, because blocks don’t get a whole lot bigger than that one. If Turkoglu makes that shot, the Pistons would have been in deep danger of losing a game they led by 10 points less than four minutes earlier. On a night they got so many huge contributions from so many different players – Antonio McDyess with an inspired fourth quarter after learning of his grandmother’s death hours earlier, Rodney Stuckey going 30 minutes without committing a turnover, Rip Hamilton draining 16 consecutive free throws – to lose that game and have to head back to Orlando … well, I think the Pistons still win the series, but at a high cost.

Lots of good things to come out of that game. Check back on Pistons.com later in the day for more.

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