Over the last couple weeks, the crew at The Jump has taken to play a game of What If on Wednesdays preceding NBA Finals games to be aired on ESPN later that night.

This What If Wednesday had them looking at the 2004 Finals, where the Detroit Pistons definitively ended the run of the Shaq and Kobe Lakers knocking them out in five, one of the biggest upsets in modern NBA history. Shaq was traded to Miami a month later, changing the landscape of the NBA.

Though the Pistons were a one-hit-wonder in the Finals, their win solidified an era with a degree of parity as, although the Spurs won three titles from 2003-2007, the NBA had different champions each year from 2002-2009 until the Lakers went back-to-back in 2009 and 2010. That eight-year stretch without a back-to-back champion was the longest since the early 1980s.

But what if the Lakers won what would have been their fourth title in five years. For one, Karl Malone, perhaps the greatest NBA player without a ring, gets one. Gary Payton gets his second. Kobe and Shaq get a fourth together instead of apart. 

The writing was on the wall for a Shaq and Kobe split eventually, but you have to think they would have run it back in 2004-05. How might that have changed the landscape? Does Shaq land somewhere other than Miami, where he helped lift Dwyane Wade to superstardom and a title?

“I truly believe, if they won that championship, you’ve got to bring that team back to compete to see if they can do it again,” Paul said. “Do we view this as the greatest team ever assembled? If you look at the resumes of the four Hall of Famers on that team…there were a lot of legacies on the line.”

Watch Paul, RJ and Rachel discuss it below and watch The Jump weekdays at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN.