8901230134
DETROIT FREE PRESS
890601
Thursday, June 01, 1989
METRO FINAL CHASER
1D
MITCH ALBOM
SEE ALSO METRO FINAL EDITION 1D
Copyright (c) 1989, Detroit Free Press
PISTONS CAN SEE LA, 94-85
ON VJ DAY, DETROIT FINDS ITS LONG-LOST
SHOOTING TOUCH
He was a splash of water in a sun-baked desert. A feast of meats after a
week of starvation. Vinnie Johnson was doing something his Pistons teammates
had found nearly impossible -- hitting his shots. Hitting? Try insisting. He
would not take "no good" for an answer. He rose like destiny over any
defender, didn't matter how close, didn't matter how tall, didn't matter if
the guy had onions and garlic for dinner. Vinnie wanted it. The Pistons
needed it.
Cook, baby.
"You know me," Johnson said, sweat still dripping off his forehead, after
the Pistons knocked off Chicago, 94-85, to take a 3-2 lead in these Eastern
Conference finals. "If I get hot, I want the ball, and this team gets it to
you."
Gets it? They might have air-expressed it with a note: "Please. Be our
guest." This, remember, is a team that was shooting barely over 40 percent
for this series. And Detroit came out in Game 5 hitting the rim and the glass.
How badly did the Pistons need a hot hand? How badly did Timmy need Lassie?
How badly does Rob Lowe need a good lawyer? Did we say 40 percent? Detroit was
in danger of being renamed The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.
But (after an initial burst from Mark Aguirre) along came Vinnie, down the
stretch, finally cutting the sheath that seemed to swallow the Pistons' basket
throughout this series. Around a screen and up in the air, body bent like a
paper clip, shoot it, score! Over a big man, leaning in, hands in his face,
score! Into Michael Jordan, up in the air, shake and bake, score!
Deadly? The guy was a Johnny Carson monologue. How hot was he?
"He was so hot," said teammate John Salley of Johnson's 16- point fourth
quarter (22 total), "I'm thinking of making a video with just Vinnie and fire
in the background."
Ba-dum-bump.
Cook, baby.
Man, did we need somebody to do that," Dennis Rodman said in the locker room
afterwards. "Desperately. We just couldn't hit any shots. We were so bad in
the first half, we might as well have stayed in the locker room and looked at
film."
Yeah. Maybe something starring Charles Bronson. He usually hits what he
shoots. Here, in front of the home crowd, the Pistons began this crucial fifth
game right where they left off the first four: Joe Dumars wide open -- in and
out; Mark Aguirre wide open -- off the glass; Isiah Thomas wide open -- off
the front of the rim. Wait a minute. This was the Palace, wasn't it? Home? A
cleansing rinse after the filthy loud pair of games in Chicago?
Maybe it was. But the Pistons offense looked as if it was playing here for
the first time. Detroit was so inept in the first quarter that Chicago coach
Doug Collins took Jordan out with 5:08 left, figuring, "Hey, we already have
an eight-point lead. As long as they can't shoot, might as well rest my
superstar."
But you know the Pistons' battle cry: Deeee-fense. And so, even as their
jumpers were clanking, they kept the lid on Jordan (when he was in there)
limiting his shots, forcing him to dish off. Dumars was an unrelenting
shadow, and Rodman will actually be able to tell his grandchildren that he
blocked a Jordan shot, one on one, in the open court. For the night, Chicago's
miracle man would take just eight shots, score just 18 points. (Afterwards
there was a heated exchange between Collins and the media, with Collins
questioning any criticism of Jordan's low-scoring night. "What do you want him
to do? " Collins said. "Shoot against three guys? You guys are amazing. When
he scores 46 points you call him a one-man team, when he only takes eight
shots you call him the highest paid decoy in the league.")
Oh, well. The Pistons had their own worries. Sure, they were holding the
Bulls to an all-time NBA playoff low of 59 shots. But what good would that be
if they couldn't score themselves? Even into the third quarter, Chicago
stayed within two or three points. Enter, finally, Aguirre, who canned a
21-footer. Hey. How about that? So desperate was Chuck Daly for a shooter,
that when Aguirre passed off once to Isiah, the coach exploded.
"SHOOT THE BLEEPING BALL! YOU'RE WIDE OPEN!"
(In the locker room afterwards, someone asked Aguirre if he heard the Daly
outburst. "Doggone right I did," he said, laughing, shaking his head. "And
you can bet I was shooting everything I got my hands on after that.")
And then, of course, there was Vinnie.
How long had it been since Johnson had erupted like that? The Pistons
normally count on him to get hot when the starters are cold. But against
Chicago in this series, he had been missing nearly two of every three shots.
He was a firecracker with a wet wick. No light, no explosion. But on the
bench Wednesday, he began to sizzle. Salley later said he had a look that
said, "Put me in coach . . . or I'll start shooting from the bench."
And soon, there he was back to his old tricks, driving around screens,
throwing impossible shots at the net and watching them swish. A 14-footer! A
15-footer! A 16-footer! A three-pointer! All that was missing was the yellow
scarf and the bugle. If Johnson wasn't the cavalry Wednesday night, I don't
know what is.
"When I get that feeling," Johnson admitted, "the ball can't come back to
me fast enough." And finally, his inspiration took. James Edwards came alive
underneath, slammed in a basket, then a jumper. Dumars stole the ball, fed
Salley for a 16- footer, then drove and banked a lay-up himself. Rodman was
all over the place, grabbing every rebound (he had all 10 Piston rebounds in
the fourth quarter). For the first time in this surprisingly tough series, the
Pistons looked, well, loose offensively.
"It was a great feeling," admitted Rodman. "I almost forgot what that felt
like."
So Detroit did what it had to do, defended the home turf, and now we go
back to Chicago for Game 6. Isiah Thomas speaks often of knowing how to win,
the confidence of experience, and it may be that Friday we see just how much
-- or how little -- these upstart Bulls really have. The Pistons play well
under pressure, and the Chicago Stadium crowd is as pressure-packed as it
gets.
Just the same, if I were Chuck Daly I would kill all the air-conditioning
in Vinnie's house, wrap him in a rubber suit, and make him carry a portable
heat lamp. Cook, baby. The Pistons are one win away from the Final rainbow.
COLUMN;BASKETBALL;DPISTONS;GAME;CHICAGO;Pistons