The turning point–irreversible, as it turned out–in the play-off series between the Bulls and the Detroit Pistons came here at the Chicago Stadium, in game four, on Memorial Day. The Pistons emerged looking shaken and frazzled following their amazing loss in game three, two days before, in which they had blown a 14-point lead in the final eight minutes of play. The Bulls led the series two games to one and would all but advance to the finals against the Los Angeles Lakers if they padded their lead to 3-1. Even so, the Pistons had that ill-fated, doomed look that had typified the Bulls’ opponents through the playoffs; they appeared to be waiting for someone or something to change the momentum of the series in their favor. We were seated behind the Pistons’ bench, where their coach, Chuck Daly, kept leaning forward on his chair when the Pistons had the ball, saying over and over to himself, “Good shot, good shot,” knowing that the most obvious sign of a rattled team is poor, inexplicable shot selection, and that in the closing moments of the previous game they had picked very poor shots indeed. The Bulls, meanwhile, played confident, up-tempo basketball and opened a 17-10 lead; but Isiah Thomas–who got off to a bad start with three turnovers himself in the first quarter–decided to take direct action, stole the ball from Craig Hodges, and drove for a layup following a previous Mark Aguirre basket to close the game to 17-14.
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Typical of a game in a hard-fought play-off series, every moment was charged with tension. Each play was part of a larger body of plays making up the entire series–plays called in this situation that had worked here, plays called in that situation that had failed there–and the concept of momentum was almost palpable. When Michael Jordan hit two straight baskets–the second as he pulled up and shot following a Scottie Pippen steal–he appeared to be Big Mo personified, or, rather, one of those esoteric Greek gods–Conpendulus, guardian of momentum, perhaps–who had taken a human form so that he could alter the course of human events. That was the giddy state he had left us in after game three.
It was a strategy the Pistons were well aware of. Bill Laimbeer–who it was rumored was having a poor shooting day because he had jammed his right thumb in practice–spent much of the game on the bench, where he greeted his teammates during time-outs with the expression of a worried mother welcoming her daughter home from a late date. “Forty-eight minutes, forty-eight minutes,” he called, “forty-eight minutes of basketball and we win this game.” The idea being that if the Pistons played solid, consistent ball for the entire game and deprived the Bulls of their spurts, the Pistons would win out in the end.
Cheery as this thinking is, it doesn’t quite do justice to the season just ended. There ought to be some sort of happy ending, as in the silent movie The Last Laugh, where the director puts a board on the screen saying something like, “Our character would probably wind up decrepit and die miserably, but who wants to see that? Why don’t we have him win the lottery?” And in the next scene he’s crusing down the avenue in the backseat of a touring car. Of course, we don’t need to resort to such fantasy; all we have to do is remember game three.
