0305190323
DETROIT FREE PRESS
030519
Monday, May 19, 2003
METRO FINAL
1A
Photo ROMAIN BLANQUART/Detroit Free Press
Pistons rookie Mehmet Okur falls to the court after missing two shots
in the final 1.4 seconds. He scored 12 points.
Richard Hamilton, left, and New Jersey's Jason Kidd, right, reach for the ball
as Kerry Kittles watches. Hamilton scored 24 points and was the only Piston
with a field goal in the fourth quarter.
MITCH ALBOM FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
GAME 1 | NETS 76, PISTONS 74; EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS
Copyright (c) 2003, Detroit Free Press
ONE DOWN
OKUR'S FINAL SHOTS JUST MISS; KIDD'S DOES NOT
First, let's get our miracles straight. There was the miracle shot that won
this game for the New Jersey Nets, a desperate fadeaway jumper by Jason Kidd
that shimmied through with 1.4 seconds left. Then there was Detroit's
near-miracle basket -- a lob to Mehmet Okur that he tapped up, missed, pushed
up again, and missed as the buzzer sounded.
But never mind either of those. The real miracle of Sunday afternoon's opener
of the Eastern Conference finals was that the Pistons were within striking
distance at all.
"What'd we score, 11 points in the last quarter?" point guard Chauncey Billups
asked in the Pistons' locker room, after Detroit fell into an 0-1 series hole.
"Eleven points? How many were free throws?"
Seven, he was told.
"Seven? We made . . . two baskets?"
Right. Two baskets in the fourth quarter, total, both by Richard Hamilton.
Seventeen other shots were taken. None went in. Two-for-19. Or 10.5 percent.
You can talk all you want about Kidd's amazing shot that gave the Nets the
76-74 victory. You can talk about Ben Wallace's heart-stopping defensive
effort, his grabbing 13 rebounds in that final period alone. You can talk
about defense, fast breaks, coaching.
In the end, Okur said it best in his Turkish-stained English.
"I go up, I try," he said of that last shot, "but there was no in."
There was no "in" all day long.
The running game
"You're not gonna win many playoff games scoring 11 points in the fourth,"
Billups concluded.
To make matters worse, when the Pistons weren't busy missing shots, they were
scrambling to get the number of the Jersey-plated truck that ran past them. We
had heard that the Nets liked to run the fast break. Now we have pictures to
prove it: Kidd bounce-passing to assorted teammates for slams. Richard
Jefferson finishing a break with a 360 jam. Kerry Kittles after a steal,
laying it in.
Here is the biggest number from Sunday's game -- besides the two-basket thing.
New Jersey had 28 fast-break points; Detroit had four.
In case you can't do math -- I myself needed help on this -- that means almost
40 percent of all the Nets' points came on fast breaks. We know the Pistons
are a great defensive team. But I've yet to see anybody play defense while
running behind the opponent.
"It's very simple," said backup guard Chucky Atkins. "We have to protect the
ball and not let them run."
A big no on both counts.
The sad thing about this loss for the Pistons is that they had crawled back
from a first-quarter battering. Through tenacious defense, and a third quarter
that looked like, well, you know, an NBA box score, 27 points, they actually
entered the final period with an eight-point lead. The Palace crowd was on its
feet, expecting what no longer surprises us here in Detroit, a victory that no
one else in the country thinks this team can get.
And then it fell apart. The Pistons tried Corliss Williamson. He missed three
straight shots. They tried Tayshaun Prince. He missed six straight -- and most
of those didn't even hit the rim. They tried Billups, their upset specialist.
He missed three.
Even the foul line was no friend. Wallace missed two. Hamilton missed one.
Prince missed one. Was there a lid on that iron?
"Eleven points in the fourth quarter," Prince said, sighing, "is not gonna get
it done."
No in.
It's Kidd's play
Now, depending on whom you spoke to, this was either New Jersey playing its
game or Detroit NOT playing its game. Nets coach Byron Scott said, "In the
second and third quarters, we stopped running. We allowed them to do what they
wanted to do."
Meanwhile, Pistons coach Rick Carlisle said, "We got in a hole because we
allowed them to get their transitions."
Well. Somebody allowed something.
But let's allow these words for Kidd. He's a machine. In the first period, he
was like a train robber on speed, hopping from car to car, grabbing the loot,
hopping to another car, robbing it blind. He had three steals and four assists
and six points in the first quarter alone. And even though he went cold
shooting the rest of the game, he was there at the end, with a huge shot from
the right corner over Okur's outstretched arms.
"That was the first game-winning shot I've made all year," Kidd said.
The Pistons don't want to hear that. This guy doesn't need any more
confidence. And neither do the Nets.
The danger of this loss -- beyond the obvious -- is that it lets the Nets
continue a roll that gets exponentially harder for Detroit to derail. The Nets
have won seven straight playoff games, and have only two losses all
postseason. The hex that the Palace was supposed to hold over them is gone
after Game 1. So, too, is the Pistons' home-court advantage. It will be harder
to play any mind games with New Jersey. All those cards were dealt away Sunday
afternoon.
Two baskets? Ten-and-a-half percent shooting? The funny thing is, with numbers
like that, had Okur's tip gone in, and had the Pistons somehow taken this
game, there might have been a different miracle to talk about: Detroit might
have been the first team to steal a playoff victory on its own floor. But as
Okur said, there was no in. So that idea's out.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. Catch "The Mitch
Albom Show" 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760). Also catch "Monday Sports
Albom" 7-8 p.m. Mondays on WJR.
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