8801240667
DETROIT FREE PRESS
880531
Tuesday, May 31, 1988
METRO FINAL
1A
Photo Color PAULINE LUBENS
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1988, Detroit Free Press
ONE-POINT AGONY
NIGHTMARES CAN HAPPEN AT HOME, TOO
And they say nightmares happen only in Boston Garden. Forget that. Here, as
the buzzer sounded in a summer-hot Silverdome Monday afternoon, was Boston's
Danny Ainge, heaving a basketball high in celebration and pointing bleep-you
fingers at the disbelieving crowd.
"YES! YES!" he shouted, his team suddenly alive again in this gut-twisting
Eastern Conference final against the Pistons.
"No . . . no . . ." the crowd seemed to whisper.
Not again. Not this same damn thing. Here were the Pistons walking off the
court, losers by a point, 79-78, in a bizarre, embarrassing game in which
their final two shots were an illegal basket and an air ball, in which they
missed 20 shots in a row -- 20? can that be right? -- in which they still had
a lead in the fourth quarter, and finally, in the last maddening seconds,
looked destiny square in the eyes . . .
. . . and blinked.
"We should have taken it, we needed to take it, we didn't take it," moaned
Bill Laimbeer in the dejected locker room afterward -- and those words must
have gone out his mouth and back into his ears. For Laimbeer (29 points, the
high scorer) had the best shot in the final eight seconds, a fairly open
jumper from the left of the key. He should have taken it.
He did not.
Instead he hesitated for an instant, then passed to Joe Dumars in a pack
under the rim. Dumars, with the seconds ticking off in his head, let fly a
desperate, high-arching shot over Dennis Johnson. It rose with dreams and came
down with nothing -- air ball -- and the Celtics grabbed it as if it were an
oxygen tank and they were under water.
Suddenly, they were breathing again.
"When you kill a snake in the morning, it still twitches until sundown,"
said a frustrated coach Chuck Daly, who has lived this nightmare too many
times, after the Celtics tied the series at 2-2. "You've got to cut its head
off! We haven't been willing to do that."
Not yet. Not Monday.
Not again.
Always just an inch better
What happened here? Why is it that every time the Pistons have these
Celtics pinned to the floor, they turn into some kind of green mist and slip
away? Wasn't this the game to end all that? Wasn't this the chance to go up
3-1 in this series, to really take control -- all they had to do was beat
Boston in the Silverdome, where the Celtics had lost nine in a row? Wasn't
it?
It was. But instead, at the moment of truth, the two teams played a game
that Isiah Thomas would claim "neither team deserved to win." A game in which
the Pistons' jump shooting was like like trying to force a bowling ball into
a Coke bottle. Detroit scored just 10 points in the first quarter. Just 36 in
the first half.
In other years, the Celtics would have blown this game open by 40 points.
But the Celtics were mediocre this day at best, and it seems the Pistons'
curse that Boston will just be an inch better in these nail-biting affairs,
just one bad pass better, just one free throw better. . . .
Free throws? Good Lord. Not again. Adrian Dantley missed one in the final
minutes that might have assured a tie. Passes? Larry Bird got one to Dennis
Johnson for Boston's last basket, while Dantley countered with a lob for John
Salley, who rose high above the rim -- only to see the ball go in on its own!
"The rules say if you touch it as it's going in, it still counts as a
basket," protested Salley, who claimed he did just that. The referees
disagreed. And it was typical of the horrific finish. When Dumars' last shot
was grabbed by Robert Parish (who may well have committed goaltending, a call
that wasn't made, but then, does that surprise you anymore?) the 26,625 fans
seemed to go numb, they didn't move, they cold only watch, swallow, and feel
that familiar ache in the pit of their stomachs.
Not again.
No killer instinct
What a shame. What a pain. There is a feeling in Detroit this morning of
frustration, of blown chances, of sympathy. It is a confusing mix, because you
want to blame somebody, but whom do you blame?
Well, let's be real honest. The Pistons are a wonderful, exciting,
hopeful team -- but this time, the nightmare was themselves. "Any time you
shoot 33 percent, you don't deserve to win," admitted Laimbeer.
And anytime your team is tentative when it should be aggressive, and
anytime your final quarter is your disaster, and anytime you pass up an open
shot, mess up an inbounds pass, miss a free throw. . . .
This ugly truth remains: Detroit still must learn to covet success more
than it fears failure. On Monday, with the reins in their hands, they looked
. . . well, how can we say this?
They looked scared.
"We were playing not to lose instead of to win," admitted a soft-spoken
Thomas, the captain. And he was right. Instead of respecting the Celtics,
paying homage to their greatness, the Pistons should have come out and
effectively said: "Get lost, Boston. We're going to the finals and you can't
stop us."
That is the killer instinct that Daly was talking about. It comes with
time. It comes with experience. It is still quite possible that it will come
for Detroit in this series -- which is now a best-of-three affair, with two
games in Boston. But it will have to be earned.
"We never seem to get anything the easy way," said Laimbeer, shaking his
head. "Everything's got to be the hard way. Everything."
The optimistic will say that most things worth having are hard to get. The
pessimistic will see Boston as a demon that holds all the magic dust, a team
that can win despite a shooting slump by Larry Bird, despite a bench that
plays as stiff as the wood it sits on, despite fatigue, age and all the other
Boston gripes.
The realistic? The realistic will say: Game 5, Wednesday. Boston Garden.
"You see anything on there that surprises you?" someone asked Thomas, as
he sat by his locker, staring at the final stat sheet.
Silence.
"Anything on there that doesn't surprise you?" the questioner persisted.
Silence.
"Anything that . . . um . . ."
He crunched the paper into a small ball and threw it into the corner.
We play on.
CUTLINES:
Piston guard Isiah Thomas reacts with disbelief after fouling Boston's Dennis
Johnson late in Monday's playoff game at the Silverdome. Johnson's subsequent
free throw won the game for the Celtics.
Pistons owner William Davidson, left, has his cheering section of Sen.Don
Riegle and Gov. Blanchard during Game 4 Monday at the Silverdome.
STATE EDITION PAGE 1A:Celtic Danny Ainge and Piston Isiah Thomas vie for a
loose ball during Game 4 at the Silverdome Monday.
BASKETBALL;PLAYOFF;DPISTONS;CELTICS;GAME;Pistons