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Anthony Olivieri, ESPN.com
SITTING IN THE visitors’ locker room after Game 6 of the 1988 NBA Finals, Detroit Pistons guard Isiah Thomas knew his badly injured ankle needed treatment. But the Los Angeles Lakers, who had just beaten the Pistons by a point, wouldn’t help. Not even with ice.
As Thomas thought about Game 7, the door to the locker room swung open and in walked Mike Ornstein. Known as an NFL fixer, Ornstein had been former coach John Madden’s gofer before being promoted to the executive suite, where he worked for Al Davis, owner of the Los Angeles Raiders.
“‘Al Davis said you can come over and use his facilities,'” Thomas recalls Ornstein telling him.
Ornstein had met Thomas before; he had been around the Pistons, whose bare-knuckle style had them nicknamed “The Raiders of the NBA.” The comparison had delighted Davis, who sent the Pistons 15 boxes of white-knit sweaters with silver-and-black Raiders logos earlier in the season.
Thomas made the six-mile drive from the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California, to the Raiders’ facility in El Segundo, where the team was based during its 13-season stint in Los Angeles. Pistons trainer Mike Abdenour accompanied Thomas. “We had access to everything,” Abdenour said. He worked on Thomas’ ankle, and the Raiders staff helped, too.
While Thomas was getting treatment, he struck up conversations with Raiders players who were in the building during the offseason. There was Howie Long, the future Hall of Fame defensive lineman, and Matt Millen, the linebacker who would be named to the Pro Bowl, and Marcus Allen, the running back who was the MVP of the Raiders’ last Super Bowl victory nearly five years earlier. They talked about how to dictate a game and how to play, think and act as one.
“We would have long, long, long, deep conversations about football, basketball, how it works, and how we can connect the two,” Thomas said, “… They liked our tenacity, and then we just started telling Raiders stories.”
The Pistons weren’t shy about being connected to the old Oakland Raiders, wearing the villain’s persona with pride. Their path to the Finals saw them beat an ascending Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls with a combative style.
It was known as The Jordan Rules.
In El Segundo, Thomas said he spent the night at the facility and left with a Raiders shirt, gifted by Ornstein, that read “Real Men Wear Black.” He was pictured on crutches, wearing the shirt, ahead of Game 7.
There was a Compton, California, kid who was influenced by both franchises. Antonio Pierce grew up a fan of the Raiders; his first memory of the silver and black, as a 5-year-old boy, was of Allen reversing field on his way to pay dirt in Super Bowl XVIII. As the franchise became a symbol of late ’80s counterculture, its hats famously showcased to a burgeoning MTV generation by artists like N.W.A, Pierce wore a Raiders Starter jacket. He’s now the head coach, in his first full season after an interim stint, of the Las Vegas Raiders.
But this time, Pierce wants his Raiders to emulate Thomas’ Pistons who were emulating the old Raiders, completing an unlikely circle. And the Michael Jordan he wants to thwart is Patrick Mahomes, the three-time champion quarterback of the rival Kansas City Chiefs. Making Mahomes the center of a defense’s attention isn’t a novel concept, but with the connection between the Raiders and Pistons in mind, Pierce’s team has a unique mission.
“We’ve got The Jordan Rules,” Pierce said on an episode of “The Rush,” a podcast co-hosted by Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby, in February,” and what I’m calling, from now on as long as I’m here, The Patrick Mahomes Rules.”
TO OVERCOME MAHOMES, the Raiders must transcend both sport and era, while tapping into their own storied history.
The Raiders debuted in Oakland in 1960, one of the eight founding members of the AFL. They quickly took on the persona of both their hardscrabble hometown, a port city that historically has housed the working class, and the man who would become their maverick owner.
“Oakland was the Bay Area and not the trendy, rich side, the San Francisco side of the Bay Area, but the East Bay,” said author Matt Ehrlich, who wrote the book “Kansas City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports Rivalry That Defined An Era.” “The Raiders’ franchise and the image that they cultivated [connected] with Oakland’s self-image as being that of an underdog.
“[But] the Raiders’ identity really was an outgrowth of Davis’ identity.”
Davis arrived as the franchise’s head coach and general manager in 1963. He changed the team colors from black and gold to silver and black. He eventually became the team’s owner and one of the most influential figures in pro football history. An outsider from the start, Davis even had a short stint as AFL commissioner, taking the establishment NFL head on before the leagues merged in 1970.
The Raiders of the 1970s had a secondary — safeties George Atkinson and Jack Tatum, along with cornerbacks Willie Brown and Alonzo “Skip” Thomas — who were known as the “Soul Patrol,” a hard-hitting group fueled by intimidation. Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll once described Atkinson’s play, the day after an especially brutal hit, as part of the game’s “criminal element.” Tatum, nicknamed “The Assassin,” said his signature hits were akin to “felonious assault,” and Thomas was called “Dr. Death.”
“They always embraced that villainous image,” Ehrlich said. “They’ve always tried to have that kind of swagger.”
By 1974, an NFL Films video showed the team’s season highlights over an ominous tune, with drums and trumpets building to a crescendo as the Raiders wrecked their opponents. “The autumn wind is a pirate, blustering in from sea,” broadcaster John Facenda began. He continued: “The autumn wind is a Raider, pillaging just for fun.” It became part of the franchise’s lore, and Facenda’s voice became synonymous with the NFL’s tough guy image.
The Raiders went on to win three Super Bowls, in the 1976, 1980 and 1983 seasons. But they haven’t won one since. They moved from Oakland to Los Angeles and back to Oakland before leaving for Las Vegas before the 2020 season. They haven’t won a playoff game since January 2003, the same month as their last Super Bowl berth. Davis died in 2011, handing the franchise to his son, Mark, who has presided over eight coaches in 14 seasons during which he was controlling owner. Pierce is the third coach since Jon Gruden resigned five games into the 2021 season, when reports surfaced that emails he sent years earlier as an ESPN employee had racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic language.
During his introductory news conference in January, Pierce nodded to his earlier years as a fan. Then, this past July, to decidedly less fanfare, the Raiders returned to Southern California, holding their training camp in Costa Mesa, less than 40 miles south of their old facility in El Segundo.
Before one July practice, Pierce told the gathered media that he expected “bang-bang” when his players put pads on for the first time. He talked about his memories of participating in the Oklahoma drill, the since-banned, survival-of-the fittest staple of old-school football, as a player. On the field, defensive assistant Rob Ryan, a member of one of the NFL’s first families, shouted instructions, hair flapping in the breeze, and franchise sack leader Greg Townsend looked on just steps away.
But this was a different league than the one dominated by Tatum and Atkinson. Over the past 20-plus years, the NFL has implemented rules changes to both encourage offense (in 2004, league officials cracked down on illegal contact on receivers after 5 yards) and ensure safety (the league’s website says there have been more than 50 rules changes since 2002 “to eliminate potentially dangerous tactics”). Many of those are centered on protecting quarterbacks like Mahomes.
So, Pierce must use a different blueprint to help his players understand their mission.
“You remember when Jordan was going through it with the Pistons, all those guys in the ’80s,” Pierce said on Crosby’s podcast, “before he became Michael Jordan, Air Jordan, the Pistons used to whup his ass. Any time he came to the hole? Elbows, feeling him, love taps. We touched him. We’re in the head, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, I’m touching you.
“So, I showed those guys Jordan getting his ass whupped.”
BEFORE HE RECEIVED those so-called love taps, Jordan scored 59 points against the Pistons one afternoon in early April 1988. The Bulls won by 2. Pistons coach Chuck Daly later said that’s when The Jordan Rules were born.
Jordan was amid one of the greatest individual seasons of all time. He would become the first player in NBA history to win regular-season MVP and Defensive Player of the Year in the same year. But heading into the 1987-88 season, Jordan’s Bulls had yet to make it out of the first round of the playoffs. They would make it to the second round, in May 1988, only to be ousted in five games by the Pistons, who would go on to make the NBA Finals. The Pistons lost Game 7 of those Finals, which Thomas played with a limp, but they were the team to beat in the East.
“The Bulls had the best player: Jordan,” said former Chicago Tribune writer Sam Smith, whose book “The Jordan Rules” came out in 1991 and became a New York Times best-seller. “All Star. MVP. Defensive Player of the Year. Most popular. Not considered the greatest of all time yet, but elite for his era and certainly better talent than anyone on the Pistons.
“The Pistons, they were belittling Jordan all the time, saying, ‘Yeah, score all your points, but you can’t win the games,’ which continued to raise his frustrations toward them.”
Pejoratives were used to describe center Bill Laimbeer, who opponents called a cheap-shot artist. And power forward Rick Mahorn was viewed as a hockey enforcer in an NBA player’s body. Jordan accused Mahorn and forward Adrian Dantley of deliberately trying to injure him during the 1988 season and got in a fight with Laimbeer during the playoffs. The role of heel became a part of the Pistons’ identity.
Thomas told ESPN that NBA video personnel were embedded with the Pistons during the 1987-88 season. As an ode to a line from the 1983 movie “Scarface,” Thomas used to rally his teammates before games by belting out, “Say hello to The Bad Boys because you’re never going to see bad boys like us again.” The NBA-issued team video was named “Bad Boys: 1987/88 Detroit Pistons,” and the name stuck. And the Pistons embraced it.
“I was very critical of how they were describing our play,” Thomas said. “And so you get to the point where, OK, well, if this is the [label] they’re going to stick on that, then in sociology and psychology class, you say you adapt a label and you try to make it work for you as best you can.”
As “The Bad Boys” gained momentum, and kept winning, a Detroit Bad Boys logo was born. It had white lettering over a black background, and there was a skull and crossbones over an orange basketball. Fans wore T-shirts with the logo, and there was even a flag at home games.
“This is where Al Davis and the Raiders, the connection came through,” Thomas said, “because we were playing with a mentality of toughness and mental toughness where the league was looking at it as physical toughness.”
Ornstein, the NFL fixer, died in July. He went on to become Reggie Bush’s marketing agent. He would be sentenced to eight months in jail for “conspiring to scalp Super Bowl tickets and hawking fake ‘game-worn’ jerseys.” CBS Sports even reported a connection to the New Orleans Saints and “Bountygate.” But during the heyday of “The Bad Boys,” he was an outsider who became a Pistons insider. He even went to Abdenour’s wedding. The connection had endured.
Davis gave Raiders jerseys to the Pistons with their names and numbers on the back. The Pistons of that era rattled other teams, there was even an instance where before a game, the Pistons sent their whole roster to the pregame captains meeting. “In our Raiders jerseys,” Thomas said. Teams usually send one or two players.
“The game was over,” Abdenour said, “before it started.”
FIRST, PIERCE made sure his team hated the color red.
The old AFL rivalry between the Raiders and Chiefs had been one-sided. Heading into the Christmas Day 2023 matchup, Mahomes-led Chiefs teams had won 10 of 11 games against the Raiders. Ahead of the Monday matchup, Pierce was reminded of the first game between the teams last season, four weeks prior, when the Raiders took a 14-0 lead but lost 31-17. Pierce didn’t want that to happen again.
So, in the week leading up to the game, after his players built up a sufficient aversion to the Chiefs’ home reds, Pierce explained to Crosby on his podcast how he separated his preparation into four quarters.
On Wednesday of that week, he showed his team the three-round bout between Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns from 1985 that includes what many consider the best first round in boxing history, a slugfest that had constant action from the start. It set the tone for a clash.
On Thursday, it was Nate Diaz vs. Conor McGregor from UFC 196 in 2016. After McGregor had his way in the first round, Diaz forced McGregor to submit in the second with a rear-naked choke. It showed resilience.
Before Saturday’s final part, footage of 12- and 15-round Muhammad Ali fights, and on Friday Pierce showed his team how it can achieve a tactical advantage. He had televisions in the room playing footage of the Raiders and Chiefs — and another with Jordan getting swarmed by Pistons. The footage showed how the Pistons wouldn’t allow Jordan any space on the court.
They bumped him when he didn’t have the ball and knocked him to the floor when he did.
When he wanted to be in the middle of the court, they sent him to his left.
When he was isolated on the wing, they funneled him toward three or four hulking defenders in the middle.
“We wanted to force [Jordan] to be a decision-maker,” Thomas said. “He’s got to make decisions, and he’s got to be under duress making those decisions. So consequently, when you’re trapping him, you’re sending him to his weaker hand, which is his left side. …
“All the great players want it their way. They want it easy. They want to walk in and score their points and look good and everybody clap for them and go home. Well, we don’t let you do that.”
It was a blueprint for how Pierce hoped to attack Mahomes.
“We’ve got to knock off the head of the snake,” Pierce said on the podcast.
In that Christmas Day game, with the footage of Jordan fresh in their minds, the Raiders defense took over, scoring two touchdowns on consecutive plays — a scoop and score by defensive tackle Bilal Nichols and a pick-six by cornerback Jack Jones. Las Vegas won 20-14.
Mahomes was sacked four times, the most by the Raiders against Mahomes since he entered the league, according to ESPN Stats & Info. The 22 pressures were the most by the Raiders against the Chiefs in four years, and the 20 quarterback contacts were the most against Mahomes by any opponent. The old Oakland Raiders were back for one game.
The smell of victory cigars wafted out of the Raiders’ locker room.
The Chiefs haven’t lost since.
“ULTIMATELY,” SAID OSI Umenyiora, an ex-NFL defensive lineman and Pierce’s former teammate on the New York Giants, “you don’t have to play dirty.”
Those Giants won perhaps the most famous Super Bowl title in history, toppling Tom Brady’s previously undefeated New England Patriots in dramatic fashion. Brady was sacked 21 times in 578 pass attempts during the 2007 season. In Super Bowl XLII, he was brought down five times while being hurried, pressured and forced out of his comfort zone.
“[Mahomes] needs to feel you in his vicinity,” Umenyiora said. “He needs to feel you breathing down his neck. He needs to understand he doesn’t have time to make these throws. You’re going to disrupt the rhythm of their offense.
“He hands the ball off, you’re going to smack the running back. You’re going to make him uncomfortable, move off the spot. You’re going to be in his space when he’s throwing the ball. As his motion is coming down, maybe he’s hitting his hand on your helmet. You have to be around him. And I think that’s pretty much all they’re going to be able to do.”
Jessie Armstead, special assistant to the GM for the Giants and a former Pro Bowl linebacker, talks to Pierce weekly on the phone. The two became fast friends in Washington during Pierce’s second year. Armstead said that he knows Pierce’s mentality because it’s his own. Armstead said there are ways for a defense to gain a mental edge despite rules that have increasingly protected quarterbacks over the past two decades.
“Hopefully,” Armstead said, “something you do will start irritating that quarterback.”
That’s where Patrick Graham comes in. The Raiders’ defensive coordinator acknowledged that there is a special set of principles when facing the best quarterback in the game, like when the Giants — or anyone, for that matter — faced Brady.
“You’re dealing with a quarterback who has full access to the field with his arm,” Graham said. “He’s had a ton of reps. So, it’s going to be hard to disguise and trick him.”
So, the defense molded by Graham and Pierce went back to the basics. When talking to ESPN about it during training camp in July, Graham used defensive buzz words. Effort. Discipline. Communication. Disrupt the timing of receivers. Make it hard to throw from the pocket on time and on target.
“But it starts with the mental,” Graham said, “in terms of knowing that it’s going to be a tough task. So, the rules are just to give yourself a shot.”
Brad Donohue, a clinical licensed psychologist and professor at UNLV, works with amateur and professional athletes on both giving and receiving intimidation. Donohue has the athletes watch videos, including one of Laimbeer throwing Larry Bird to the floor in a 1980s NBA game before Bird comes back and scores on him. Donohue mentions strategies like Jim Brown walking in front of the competition on purpose before the game or Walter Payton hopping up spryly after a big hit to show he wasn’t fazed.
“There’s a science and skill set to intimidating optimally,” Donohue said. “Basically, trying to lead the opponent into a state of timidity, overconcern and anxiety. Learning to use intimidation optimally requires practice, and years of experience, which is why most intimidators are exceptional at what they do.
“I’ve found the benefits of intimidation are clear in boosting confidence, increasing adrenaline and positive emotions, motivation and ability to distract opponents from their gameplan.”
Then, when you’re playing Mahomes, you also have to pray.
PATRICK MAHOMES, LIKE Michael Jordan before him, has shaped the legacies of his teammates and contemporaries as much has his own. There may be a potential NFL quarterback counterpart for every Patrick Ewing, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley, John Stockton and Karl Malone, who finished their careers without a title because of Jordan.
In July, ESPN released a list of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, according to league executives, coaches and scouts. Six of the top seven — including Mahomes at No. 1 — play in the AFC. The Bengals’ Joe Burrow, No. 2 on the list, has lost to Mahomes twice in the AFC Championship Game. The Bills’ Josh Allen, ranked No. 3, has lost to Mahomes three times in the playoffs. The fourth quarterback in the rankings, Lamar Jackson, lost to Mahomes in last year’s AFC title game, and Justin Herbert, No. 6 on the list, is stuck in Mahomes’ division, unable to win it.
The Raiders, without a star quarterback and thought to be among the league’s worst teams, are in that division, too. Pierce, though, brings a reason for optimism: His defense allowed just 16 points per game in the nine games — five of them wins — during his interim tenure last season. But he will be judged, ultimately, on how he stacks up against the Raiders’ oldest rival.
Pierce wasn’t interviewed for this story, but he did tell ESPN’s Andscape in August “at the end of the day, you’ve got to try something different. You’ve got to try to make the change you want,” in reference to not backing off any actions since becoming Raiders coach. A Chiefs spokesman said that Mahomes hasn’t been asked about Pierce’s comments since they happened shortly after February’s Super Bowl, when there was no media availability. The spokesman didn’t respond to a follow-up request for comment.
Mahomes and the Chiefs aim to become the first NFL team in the Super Bowl era to win three consecutive championships. Jordan, of course, is famous for winning his six championships in two separate three-peats. On the NBC broadcast before the NFL’s season-opening game between the Chiefs and the Ravens, The Mahomes Rules were a topic of conversation.
“It’s the highest compliment that our team could receive, to be embraced by another sport, in particular football,” Thomas said. “But I wouldn’t say our style of play [is what’s being emulated]. I would say what’s being incorporated is our mentality.”
For the Raiders, translating that into wins is another story.
In the season opener against the Chargers, the Raiders defense allowed just 83 total yards and two first downs in the first half en route to a 7-6 lead. With the game in the balance in the fourth, when the Raiders trailed 16-10 with 7:15 remaining, Pierce decided to punt on fourth-and-1 from the Chargers’ 43. The Raiders were the first team to punt on fourth-and-1 in opposing territory in the fourth quarter in a one-score game since 2016.
“We got what we wanted,” Pierce told reporters after the game.
The Raiders had all three of their timeouts. The Chargers were pinned back on their own 8-yard line after the punt. Pierce’s defense was on the field.
Los Angeles promptly took the ball and drove 92 yards for the deciding score thanks to a 61-yard run by J.K. Dobbins that led to a 10-yard score from rookie WR Ladd McConkey.
“Again, defense was the strength for the most part of the game,” Pierce said.
After the score, the Chargers went for two, and running back Gus Edwards was stopped short. But players from both teams spilled out the back of the end zone as multiple fights broke out when the play finished. Flags flew. Punches were thrown, and there were two ejections: Chargers wide receiver Joshua Palmer and Jones, the Raiders cornerback.
“Undisciplined,” Pierce said of the brawl.
Las Vegas lost 22-10.
Ultimately, the principles of The Mahomes Rules are the same that have defined defensive football for generations: play together, play physical, be relentless, go get the quarterback – and capture any mental edge available against an opponent.
For the Raiders, Jackson and the Ravens are the next test.
Mahomes and the Chiefs arrive in Las Vegas for Week 8. That’s six weeks away.