DETROIT – The Detroit Pistons and Denver Nuggets don't have a ton of history between them.
The teams play in separate conferences and don't see each other very often.
Recommended Videos
When the Pistons and Nuggets play Tuesday night in Detroit, they'll be playing on the eve of one historic basketball game.
On December 13, 1983 - the Detroit Pistons beat the Denver Nuggets by the final score of 186-184, in what still stands as the highest-scoring regular season NBA game ever played.
The Pistons, who at the time were lead by Kelly Tripucka, Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer, averaged 117 points per game during the 1983 season, but Denver averaged 123.7 points per game - the most in the league.
“At that time, if you go to Denver you know you’re going to be in for a scoring match,” said forward Kelly Tripucka. “They didn’t run a lot of plays, they just kept running. We knew we had to play a certain way with them.”
Tripucka owned the second OT, scoring all 12 Pistons points. Apparently, he was eager to end the game. “The game lasted so long, we were wondering if we could find a place to eat after the game,” he said. “We were wondering, ‘is there an all-night diner in Denver?’ ”
The halftime score was 74-74, but the game would end in triple overtime.
12 players scored in double figures - Thomas (47), John Long (41), Tripucka (35), Terry Tyler (18), Laimbeer (17), and Vinnie Johnson (12) for Detroit and Kiki Vandeweghe (51), Alex English (47), Dan Issel (28), Mike Evans (16), Richard Anderson (13), and Danny Schayes (11) for the Nuggets. The teams combined to shoot a remarkable 56.6 percent from the field en route to a league-record 142 field goals.
