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DETROIT FREE PRESS
050607
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
METRO FINAL CHASER
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Photo KIRTHMON F. DOZIER/Detroit Free Press
It's not the ultimate prize - that's the Larry O'Brien Trophy - but Pistons center Ben Wallace certainly enjoys hoisting the Eastern Conference trophy in the locker room Monday night. The Pistons open the NBA Finals on Thursday night at San Antonio.
Pistons Rasheed Wallace, left, and Richard Hamilton sport all the signs of a champion - the right cap, the right T-shirt and the right expression. In Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, Hamilton scored 22 points and Wallace had 20.
MITCH ALBOM
Free Press columnist
EASTERN CONFERENCE GAME 7 | DETROIT 88, MIAMI 82;SEE ALSO METRO FINAL ONE DOT EDITION, PAGE 1A
Copyright (c) 2005, Detroit Free Press
TO THE FINALS!
BRING ON THE SPURS! CHAMPION PISTONS PROVE, AT LAST, THEY CAN HANDLE THE HEAT
MIAMI - It was the final two minutes of the final game and he was playing without his headband and with five fouls and with the ugly roar of boos raining down on any good he did for his team. So what did Rasheed Wallace do?
He did more of it.
He hit two free throws to put the Pistons ahead by one. He grabbed a rebound off a Dwyane Wade miss. He followed a Tayshaun Prince miss and banked it back in, giving the Pistons a three-point lead with 55 seconds left. Then he helped tie up Wade to force a jump ball. The boos continued, the scowls were all around, he was the villain everywhere in the arena - maybe everywhere in America that doesn't have a Great Lake around it - but he was a hero in Detroit.
Whose basketball team, by the way, has a few more games to play.
It goes on. The quest. The reputation. The words "defending champions" after "Detroit Pistons." Here in the land of hurricanes and alligators, the Pistons' defense of their NBA crown, thought to be dangling off a pirate ship's plank, survived the last squall, it will play for another title. It took punches, it was bruised and dizzy. But it stands this morning, the crown still on its head, thanks to an exhausting 88-82 Game 7 victory over Miami.
And it is marching down to Texas, to face the final challenge in the war they call a championship.
Heat. Beat.
"They don't know that's what we do!" sang Rip Hamilton in the locker room after Monday night's victory. "They don't know that's what we do!"
And what they do, they will keep on doing.
It goes on because when it counted most, the Pistons remembered who they were, keeping the Heat at jab's length until they could deliver the knockout, allowing only five baskets in the fourth quarter.
It goes on because Hamilton, a ridiculously efficient machine, came alive early, pulling up and burying his first six shots and scoring 22 on the night. "The great players are the ones that dictate what happens in a game like this," coach Larry Brown had said less than an hour before tip-off.
Consider Hamilton great. It goes on because of him.
It goes on because the Pistons survived Wade's visit to Lourdes at halftime. Wade scored 12 acrobatic points in the third quarter. But the Pistons absorbed him and his magic, with Hamilton and Chauncey Billups and Tayshaun Prince and Lindsey Hunter taking turns trying to break the stallion. It goes on because of their defense.
And it goes on because Rasheed was Rasheed when he most needed to be. Forget the floating games earlier in the series. There is something intangible about this guy, like a lighter that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, but when it does, man, what a flame!
"He's our best player," Billups said. "He's unbelievable."
It goes on. The season. The playoffs. The players. The coach. The interviews. The predictions. The Brown rumors. All of it. It goes on for at least another week or two now, because the Pistons, winners of the East, will face San Antonio, winners of the West.
"They don't know that's what we do!" Hamilton kept singing. "They don't know that's what we do - do."
Do-do?
It goes on.
Call him ‘Willis' Wade
It goes away. This Miami Heat group that tested Detroit, that pushed it to the limit of its lungs and heart and brain, finally rides off into the humid sunset. "I never thought I'd say I was sick of flying to Miami," Hunter said, "but I am."
Can you blame him? The Heat was eliminated from these Eastern Conference finals after what felt like a month-long series. Ask yourself, did you have any idea who Udonis Haslem was before this thing started? Did you know Eddie Jones? Could you tell Stan Van Gundy from a deli counter worker, even though he often looks like a deli counter worker?
No, but you can now. The Heat, starting with Shaquille O'Neal and Dwyane Wade and moving down the lineup, were a formidable foe for the Pistons. The 40-point performance by Wade in Game 2 was, it turned out, only the opening salvo in a Miami bombardment. Wade continued his excellence right up to his injury in Game 5. Shaq burned Ben Wallace night after night. (He had a game-high 27 Monday.) Wade nearly won the Game 7 on inspiration, making 5-of-6 shots in the third quarter, disrupting everything, causing the crowd to rise in collective bursts of amazement.
But then he slowed, and the Pistons' defense squeezed. And Wade didn't score again. A six-point Miami lead with just over seven minutes left was whittled away and finally tied.
"Once we had it tied, I kind of knew we were OK," Prince said. "Then all we had to do was what we do best."
Still, the Heat is a dogged bunch. You can bet it'll be back next year. Let's face it. Miami makes winning the Eastern Conference a lot more difficult.
But the East is in the Pistons' pocket now, thanks to Hamilton's deadeye shooting and Rasheed's heroics (20 points on the night) and Billups' cool-handed free throws in the closing seconds.
And the final snapshot of O'Neal, that open-mouthed, dazed look on his face, a giant who had never lost a Game 7 in his career, having to watch for a second June as the Pistons leave him behind - well, that is the image that allows Detroit fans to take their first real basketball breath in about two weeks.
Heat. Beat.
It goes away.
Winning the right way
It goes down in history. This was the first Detroit Game 7 victory on the road. Three other times the Pistons tried and failed. I remember the last two. They came in back-to-back years, 1987 and '88, when the Pistons were trying to climb the mountain of the Celtics and the Lakers, who basically owned the NBA during the '80s. The first time, the Pistons fell short after Adrian Dantley and Vinnie Johnson knocked heads going for a loose ball. The ghosts of the Boston Garden were giggling. Detroit went home, hurt and hungry.
Detroit came back one year later, beat those Celtics, then went to seven games against the Lakers, losing in the finale mostly because Isiah Thomas was gimpy with a turned ankle. The movie stars in the L.A. Forum danced and laughed. Detroit went home again, hurt and hungry.
So how did the Pistons overcome the hex Monday night? Simple. Those others defeats were steps on a ladder, rites of passage for a team that was building to a championship. These Pistons aren't learning to win a title; they are trying to keep it. They are dead set on keeping it. Perhaps that didn't play like that every minute of this series, but what counts, they will tell you, is not the first team to win two or three games but the first team to win four.
They did it. On the road.
"We all came together, we all stuck together, we all had each other's back," Hamilton said. "We just knuckled down."
It goes away - the hated Heat,
It goes down - in history.
It goes on - the Pistons' reign - all the way to San Antonio.
Hey. It's what they do-do.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. He will sign Father's Day copies of "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" on Sunday - 12:30 p.m. at Borders in Southland Mall in Taylor - and on June 18 - 11:30 a.m. at Borders in Birmingham, 2 p.m. at Barnes & Noble in Northville and 4:30 p.m. at Borders Express at Great Lakes Crossing in Auburn Hills. 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. To read recent columns by Albom, go to www.freep.com/index/albom.
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basketball: Pistons; game 7; Eastern Conference; column;noncol