0000138483
DETROIT FREE PRESS
050610
Friday, June 10, 2005
METRO FINAL
1A
Photo ERIC SEALS/Detroit Free Press;Photo JULIAN H. GONZALEZ/Detroit Free Press
What a difference a half makes! Richard Hamilton smothers Spurs star Manu Ginobili in the first half of Game 1. At intermission, Ginobili had missed 5-of-6 shots for four points. In the second half, he made 9-of-10 shots for 22 points. The Pistons had been 4-0 in opening games of the NBA Finals.
Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace can't stop San Antonio's Tony Parker from heading to the bucket in the second half. Parker scored 15 points.
MITCH ALBOM
Free Press columnist
SEE ALSO METRO FINAL ONE DOT EDITION, PAGE 1A;NBA FINALS GAME 1 | SPURS 84, PISTONS 69
Copyright (c) 2005, Detroit Free Press
TEXAS FOLD 'EM
PISTONS GO BUST IN GAME 1 WITH 32-POINT SECOND HALF
SAN ANTONIO - At one point in Game 1 Thursday night, Rasheed Wallace fired a shot over Tim Duncan and the ball just … stopped. It literally stopped. It quit. It halted. It punched its own clock. OK, it was wedged between the rim and the backboard. Then again, it might have done that in protest. You could almost hear it say, "I'm staying here until you guys play some offense. I'm sick of getting poked around all night."
Welcome to the NBA Finals - now strip. Strip, rip, slap, poke, block, stuff, whack and flick that ball away, so that shots are interrupted and passes are deflected and arms are interlocked and bodies are so close you can't tell if that sweat on your forehead is yours or his. The heat of the day had been oppressive in this Texas town, a choking steam bath spilling into your lungs. You swallowed it. You tasted it. You sensed it on you and inside you.
Now you know how the Pistons felt all night.
In a game that resembled one long shot block, Detroit started on fire but ended scorched, losing 84-69, among the lowest totals in their playoff history. They were bested down the stretch by defense, by pressure, by charging calls and, finally, by some clutch shooting - the other guys', not theirs.
Knock, knock. The East is here.
Knock, knock. The West looks just like it.
"They defended us better than any team all year," Larry Brown said.
Wait. Isn't that what the other guys usually say about Detroit?
Spurs hold serve. Pistons serve notice. Oh, this may not have been a close score when all was said and done - Pistons led early, Spurs blew it open late - but it's apparent these two teams can play with each other. If they survive.
Still, the Pistons will have to make their jumpers and make their lay-ups and make their free throws - if the referees actually blow the whistle - because scoring points will not be easy in this series. Heck. Hitting the rim is not a given! Detroit had 32 points in the entire second half. Then again, it's hard to score when every shot gets touched by three sets of hands.
"We missed so many easy shots tonight, lot of lay-ups, lot of five-foot jump shots," Rip Hamilton said. "We just got to relax a little bit."
Good luck relaxing during a wrestling match. Physical? Often in the playoffs you have NBA players glaring at the refs after a foul is called. On Thursday night they were all but begging for a whistle. Hamilton hit the deck, Chauncey Billups hit the deck, Ben Wallace went to the floor, time after time, and that's not easy to do. No one was open for more than a second. Almost nothing was uncontested. Few points were scored without a price - a nick, a slap, a bruise.
On one play, Tayshaun Prince got cleanly blocked by Duncan, retrieved the ball, went right back up, and got slammed down by Robert Horry.
If you didn't hit the floor, you weren't on it.
It was Manu, Manu
But in the end, it was all Spurs - particularly Manu Ginobili, the man from another continent with the game from another planet. He had 15 points in the fourth quarter (26 overall). He drove, he dunked, every time you looked up he seemed to be flopping over like a soccer player in mock pain, drawing an offensive foul, and when he wasn't doing that, he was racing down the lane like something from an erector set. He is awkward looking. But he gets his numbers. And he's awfully tough to defend.
"He was good, man," Chauncey Billups admitted. "He did what he does. He's a slasher. He can also shoot it. He's an energy guy. I thought he came out and did all of those."
Or, for a slightly more emphatic compliment on Manu, here's Duncan: "Unbelievable."
Knock, knock. East is here.
Knock. Knock. West is ready.
Great start, terrible finish
Now if you watched the start of this game - specifically the first seven minutes - you might have shut it off and started painting your float for the Detroit parade. The ball went up, and the Pistons became spiders, eight arms apiece. Every Spur who entered the web met a hand, another hand, another hand, another hand, they lost their rhythm, their dribbles and eventually the ball. Shots were poked or blocked, passes nicked or intercepted. The Spurs missed seven of their first nine shots. Detroit grabbed a 17-4 lead.
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich called two time-outs early.
"I asked (my team) if it wasn't too much trouble, if I wasn't being too pushy, if they could execute what we were trying to do," he said. "And if it didn't make them too angry, if they also wanted to play some defense on the other end, that would be great."
Hey. Wait. You don't get to win AND be sarcastic!
Well, whatever he said, worked. The Spurs came to life behind Ginobili and Duncan (24 points and, more importantly, 17 rebounds, more than twice the total of any Piston).
How a start like that turns to a finish like this for Detroit is a subject for the coaches today. The Pistons shooting went cold - and we're talking some easy and open shots here - and in frustration, they began to foul. Prince went out before the first quarter ended - two fouls - and he sat the rest of the half. Rasheed Wallace was good early but disappeared late. And the subs shot terribly - Antonio McDyess missed enough for the entire bench (1-for-8), Lindsey Hunter was 1-for-5, Carlos Arroyo was 1-for-3.
Detroit cut the lead to seven points with under three minutes left, but a one-handed slam by Ginobili put a stop to that idea.
Knock, knock.
Down one.
Evenly matched teams
Before this series started - and this was only on a three-day build-up - the hype machine had you believing any or all of the following: 1) The Spurs would dominate. 2) The Pistons would surprise. 3) The Pistons were the mirror image of the Spurs. 4) The Spurs were the mirror image of the Pistons. 5) Detroit had no one to stop Duncan. 6) San Antonio had no one to stop Rasheed Wallace. 6) The pace would drag like mud. 7) The pace would be faster than you thought.
Got all that? Good. Now throw it out. The fact is, these teams had only met twice this year, the results were split, and anyone who thought they could predict the future based on that was nuts.
What you saw Thursday was proof that these teams are well matched, and whichever team hits its shots on a given night is likely to win the game. San Antonio shot 43 percent, the Pistons less than 38 percent - with Hamilton missing an unusual 14-of-21 shots and Prince blowing lots of close in looks. That changes, perhaps the result does too.
Still, if this was Detroit's best chance to steal a game in San Antonio - where the Spurs rarely lose - well, the Pistons blew it. You won't win scoring 69 points. They made some uncharacteristic mistakes. But they were also coming off an emotional Miami series, and perhaps by Sunday, they'll be better rested.
At the very least, they'll have gotten some ice packs.
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 1; NBA Finals; loss