0000275255
DETROIT FREE PRESS
060603
Saturday, June 03, 2006
METRO FINAL
1A
Photo JULIAN H. GONZALEZ Detroit Free Press
JULIAN H. GONZALEZ/Detroit Free Press
NOT SITTING PRETTY: Pistons center Ben Wallace, who becomes a free agent next month, only can watch as the final moments of the season slip away Friday night. The Pistons shot only 33% from the field in Game 6. COMPLETE COVERAGE, SECTION B.
MITCH ALBOM
Free Press columnist
Copyright (c) 2006, Detroit Free Press
BURNED OUT
THIS WAS NO WAY FOR THE FORMER CHAMPIONS TO GO DOWN
GAME 6 | MIAMI WINS SERIES, 4-2: HEAT 95, PISTONS 78
MIAMI - All night long, as their shots clanked, as the crowd taunted, as the Miami players threw points at them like darts, the Detroit faces said it all. Eyes glazed. Heads lowered. Lips tightened. They love to walk the gangplank, these Pistons, they love to dangle over the water then yank the pirates out there and toss them into the deep.
But this time, the gangplank gave way. This time, the Pistons tripped over the chances they take and the drama they make. This time, in their worst performance of the playoffs, they were the ones falling off, their shots almost laughable, their passes going wild, their mojo slipping, slipping ...
Splash.
So long, swagger.
In a final loss that was molded by the losses that came before it, the Pistons once again shot poorly, moved badly and watched a superstar take them down. This time, it was Shaquille O'Neal, throwing his 325 pounds around as if he were a high-schooler, taking alley-oops, tapping in misses and doing the simple thing that - when all the talk is over - was the difference in this series: putting the ball in the basket.
"We just missed everything, man, lay-ups, everything," said Chauncey Billups, who went 3-for-14 in the 95-78 blowout.
Dry? The Pistons made the Sahara seem like a flood plain. Dry? If they got any drier, they'd be cotton. They clanked, they blanked, they bricked, they airballed - and that was on their OPEN shots. For much of Friday night's Game 6, Detroit's shooting hovered around the 30% mark. It was as if the net had been locked shut.
And finally, before the 11 o'clock news, with Dwyane Wade battling the flu and barely a factor, with a kid called White Chocolate outplaying all of them, with not a bang but a whimper - and barely a whimper at that - the Pistons lost their last game of the season.
So long, swagger.
Too much talking
"They did the right things tonight," said Tayshaun Prince, who went 3-for-9. "We played so well on the road throughout the regular season. And to play the way we played" in this series "is beyond me."
Miami goes to its first NBA Finals. Detroit will watch those Finals for the first time in three years. And let's be clear what was surrendered here:
These Pistons may never have been the prettiest at the party, but they always could take everyone in the room. They can't say that now. Last year they couldn't take San Antonio, the best in the West. This year they couldn't get past Miami in the East. Couldn't even take three games from the Heat.
The Pistons may be the third-best team in the NBA. So what? Will that make them feel better?
No. Despite the league's top regular-season record, they will be remembered mostly for what they didn't do - for stumbling against Cleveland and for falling against Miami in the Eastern Conference finals. Perhaps the saddest part for Pistons fans is that their players in this series, uncharacteristically, talked a better game than they played. They talked about moving. But they didn't move. They talked about having confidence. But they didn't play with confidence. They talked about putting pressure on Miami. But Detroit was the team with a piano on its back.
Here was Prince, Friday night, missing an open lay-up on a fast break. Here was Rip Hamilton throwing a ball over Ben Wallace's head. Here was Antonio McDyess with butterfingers on what could have been two easy baskets. Here was Billups hitting more iron that a blacksmith, and Rasheed Wallace, a rhythm shooter, showing all the rhythm of a kid banging his alphabet blocks together.
Chauncey had three baskets all night. Tayshaun had three. Rasheed had four. McDyess and Lindsey Hunter had none. It was embarrassing. Beneath them. No way for former champions to go down. But when you choose to live on a ledge, you are not allowed a single misstep.
They didn't misstep. They flew up in the air on a banana peel and came crashing down to Earth.
So long, swagger.
Bad out of the blocks
In looking back, the trouble really began in the first quarter of Game 1. The Heat burned Detroit for 33 points in that opening period. You don't do that to a great defensive team. Not on that team's home court. The Heat did. The Heat won.
And the Pistons were coughing dust ever since.
They always were trailing in this series. Trailing in games. Trailing in points. Trailing in movement. Trailing in energy. The final insult Friday wasn't O'Neal's powerful 28 points and 16 rebounds. You expect him to rise to the occasion.
No, the final insult was Jason Williams, now 30, who joined the Heat this year after mediocre stints in Memphis and Sacramento. He was 10-for-12 with six assists and outplayed every single player on the Detroit roster in the biggest game of the season.
Jason Williams? They let Jason Williams beat them? The "best defensive team" in the league?
That's what they can remember. That and the embarrassment Miami laid on them in the fourth quarter, a virtual garbage time of exhibition shots. At least last year, when the Eastern finals went seven games, Miami was right there at the finish. The Pistons weren't even close. All series long, they seemed to act as if their experience would win it down the stretch. But the Pistons only took one fourth quarter this entire series. By the buzzer Friday, the only people who seemed to think the Pistons had some sort of magic were the Pistons.
To paraphrase Rasheed: Scoreboard don't lie.
So long, swagger.
Tinker, don't overhaul
Now, let's be careful. This was not simply a Pistons failure. What about the Heat's success? Miami, as I've said in this space before, is simply a better team right now. Is that so impossible to fathom? The Heat has two legitimate superstars and a couple of former stars accepting role-player status. It has a championship coach. It has a pretty decent bench. It has motivation. It has hunger. When you add it all up, a bigger question than how did the Pistons lose may be why didn't anyone expect the Heat to win?
So long, swagger.
And hello ... what? Wholesale changes? That is foolish. Most teams in basketball still would give their luxury box revenue for a starting five as solid - and as signed - as Detroit's. Only Ben Wallace is on the market this summer, and he's not looking around. The oldest starters are the Wallaces at 31. You don't rip that apart because a postseason didn't work out. No. More likely, Joe Dumars will do some major tinkering with his bench. And he will hope coach Flip Saunders, just like a player facing his first real baptism of fire, will grow next season and be better when it comes around again.
"You can make some changes, coaches, a player," Ben Wallace said, "but, you know, ultimately it will be on you as an individual to accept this loss and look in the mirror and see what you can do, come back ready."
For now, the Pistons simply have to swallow the bitter taste of this. Cleveland exposed them. Miami eliminated them. Game 6 embarrassed them. And for now, it silenced them. It ain't bragging if you do it. But there's no bragging if you don't. The Pistons may want to walk around like kings without their crown, but for the second straight year that crown will go to someone else.
Their record for this post season is 10 victories, eight losses. A record like that in the regular season would have put them at the bottom of the playoff ladder, where the Eastern Conference finals would have been an achievement. But they were not aiming for the Eastern Conference finals. They were not aiming to last beyond May. They wanted late June, ring season in the NBA.
Instead, it's an early summer - and the empty end of a once hysterical hockey and basketball season. The lesson from the Red Wings and Pistons is simple: It's not how you start but how you finish. And this was how the Pistons finished, missing, gasping, falling off the gangplank, looking up at the snickering pirates as they washed away in the deep, blue waters of their discontent.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or malbom@freepress.com. Catch "The Mitch Albom Show" 5-7 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760). Also catch "Monday Sports Albom" 7-8 p.m. Mondays on WJR. To read his recent columns, go to www.freep.com/mitch.
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