The fact of the matter is that Detroit was the only team to use him effectively. He was a system player, and that system was one which stressed defense, something neither the Bulls nor Cavs did.
Practice was conducted the majority of the time, on defense. I wouldn't say Rasheed "helped" Ben's D, because Ben was a monster on D and the boards before Rasheed got there anyway.
What did help Ben was that the Pistons played spectacular team defense, and they KNEW they weren't going to get anything from him on the offensive end and accepted that. The Bulls and Cavs never did that and tried to force Ben into being more offensive, pushing him out towards the perimeter.
Yes, he was a help defender, not a great one-on-one defender, there's lots of guys like that. Bowen is a great one-on-one defender, Prince is a great one-on-one defender, Wallace was a great help defender, Duncan is a better help defender than one-on-one defender, etc. That's what Wallace did. That was his niche, and Detroit played to it perfectly while the Bulls and Cavs tried to put him in foreign territory when he was already set in his ways.
So, in the end, I would not say his numbers were an "aberration" by any means, just that he was not harnessed correctly. You wouldn't say LeBron was overrated if Mike Brown's system told him he could only shoot five times a game, you would say he was being misused. That's exactly what Ben's problem was after leaving Detroit.
