In an NBA Finals first, Game 1 began not merely with handshakes, but with a kiss. As Johnson and Thomas approached each other before the opening tip, they leaned in and smooched on the cheek. The display of affection was kind of weird, kind of cool, kind of confusing. Bird, watching back home on Indiana, was repulsed. He knew damn well it was for show, that the two players would kill each other for a trophy. When asked whether he, too, would have puckered up with Johnson, Dennis Rodman quipped, “Before that, we’d have to get engaged.”
In practices, Riley had devoted much of his energy to shutting down Thomas and Dumars, one of the NBA’s most explosive backcourts. The strategy was wise but failed to account for Dantley, the long-ago Laker small forward who averaged 20 points during the regular season. At 6-foot-4 (he was an inch smaller than his listed height) and 208 pounds, Dantley was unlike any player in the league. Though undersize and not particularly quick, he owned countless below-the-basket moves, and positioned himself with remarkable precision. Teammates nicknamed him Teach for all the tricks he’d taught them. Wilt Chamberlain once called him the greatest low-post player of all time. “His footwork was marvelous, and he was very clever,” said Frank Layden, who coached Dantley for five seasons in Utah. “At the end of games, you had to get Adrian the ball, because he never felt pressure and he always hit his free throws. He was clutch.”
Dantley had resented the Lakers since they traded him for Spencer Haywood in 1979, and the chance for payback was especially sweet. In Game 1, he exploited Los Angeles’s perimeter-oriented defense, scoring 34 points on 14-for-16 shooting against an overmatched and confused A. C. Green. “At times I was out of position on defense, and he scored every time,” Green said. “For the most part I was within our defensive game plan.” During one stretch, Dantley scored 12 straight points. When Riley finally began doubling down on Dantley, the ball was flicked out to Thomas and guard Vinnie Johnson, who teamed up for 35 points.
When Dantley hit a layup with six minutes remaining in the game, giving Detroit a 92–75 advantage, thousands of spectators began filing out of the Forum. The 105–93 loss was one of the uglier playoff setbacks of the Riley era. When the coach woke up the following morning, he read multiple newspaper columns rightly slamming him for using a limited seven-man rotation that ignored Wes Matthews (the Isiah badgerer), Campbell (the knower of all things Pistons) and Kurt Rambis and Mike Smrek (physical goons unafraid to rough up opponents). He was out-coached by Daly, and out-muscled by the league’s strongest team. “What I remember is that all of our guys were beat up and tired,” said Smrek. “The Pistons made you work.”
The teams met two nights later, and Riley again limited himself to a seven-man rotation. Within the team’s locker room, the tactic was greeted with puzzled expressions—especially considering that Johnson, his body now ravaged by the flu, was struggling to stand for more than a handful of minutes. “I don’t wish this on nobody,” he said. “The other night I had the chills and sweated a lot and was always going to the restroom. I don’t have the fever or chills anymore, but I’m still doing the restroom thing.”
The point guard played one of the most courageous games of his career, totaling 23 points and 11 assists. Yet while he received the bulk of the attention, it was James Worthy who saved the Lakers from disaster. Ever since the Celtics had branded him a choker four years earlier, Worthy’s ability to produce when it mattered had been mildly questioned. His nickname—Big Game James—was either dripping with pride or with irony, depending on the source. He was a spectacular low-post scorer (Adrian Dantley–esque, only with five more inches and longer arms), but some in the media questioned whether he could carry a team in tight spots.
Trailing by as many as 12 points in the second half, the Pistons went on a 17-to-5 run to tie the game at 80 with 8:17 remaining in the fourth quarter. With the Forum silent and Detroit’s bench players on their feet, Riley called a time-out and immediately reinserted Worthy, who had been resting, into the lineup for Mychal Thompson. “I loved the tough, pressure moments,” Worthy said. “I always felt like our practices prepared me for them, because they were so intense. Guys like Mike McGee and Larry Spriggs and Mitch Kupchak and Kurt Rambis early in my career—they’d beat me around, make life miserable. So when moments arrived in games, you were ready.” Over the next three and a half minutes, Worthy led an 11–2 Los Angeles run, scoring 6 points on a bevy of electric moves. Johnson shot an air ball—Worthy was there to snatch it and lay it in. Worthy drove on John Salley, missed, got his own rebound and—in one motion—tipped the ball in with his left hand over the 6-foot-11 giant. “Who’s got Worthy?” Laimbeer could be heard screaming. “Who’s got Worthy?” Johnson was trapped along the sideline, spotted Worthy slashing toward the rim and hit him with a no-look, behind-the-back bounce pass for a layup (on a goaltending call). Before the Pistons knew it, they were trailing 91–82. They rallied late, but to no avail. Worthy’s 26 points, 10 rebounds and 6 assists were too much to overcome. Los Angeles won, 108–96. “James was a quiet guy—very quiet,” said Green. “Maybe people confused that with his on-court persona. Because, with the basketball, he could take over.”
The series shifted to Detroit, and the Lakers continued their running ways, soaring past the Pistons in Game 3, 99–86. It was masterful Showtime, with Los Angeles scoring 22 third-quarter points off 13 fast-break opportunities. Johnson had lost seven pounds from the flu, and the IV marks remained visible in his right arm. He looked haggard—but played marvelously (18 points, 14 assists, 7-for-8 shooting). Afterward, he was giddy. His father, Earvin Sr., was petrified of flying, so this was the first time he had watched his son up close in the finals. The Lakers, meanwhile, ate like kings, enjoying a locker room meal of chicken, sweet potato pie and corn bread cooked by Christine Johnson, Magic’s mother. Once again, everything was going their way.
“I think the flu was a blessing in disguise for Earvin,” Riley said with a straight face. “He lost seven pounds of fluid. I think he was quicker.” The Pistons, by comparison, appeared to be slow and cumbersome and painfully outclassed. “We kept searching for something out of our own offense,” Laimbeer said afterward, “and we simply forgot to get back on defense.”
“We played like high schoolers,” Salley said afterward. “No poise.”
• • •
“What the fuck are we doing?”
The question, asked by Bill Laimbeer in the aftermath of Game 3, was directed toward Rick Mahorn and John Salley and Dennis Rodman and Isiah Thomas and the rest of his teammates. The Lakers had streaked past the Pistons as if they were blue-and-red cardboard cutouts. This wasn’t Detroit basketball. This wasn’t even close to Detroit basketball. Enough with Worthy slashing to the hoop and Scott hitting open jumpers and Johnson firing off no-look passes. Someone needed to be put on his ass—and quickly. The Pistons had excelled all year as black-and-blue basketball players. “We were a physical team,” said Dantley. “It was our calling card. But now . . .”
Something had changed. Though the Piston players didn’t feel nervous, or look nervous, or act nervous, they were playing nervous. It was as if the Bad Boys felt the Lakers deserved more respect than other teams, and it had to stop.
The Pistons used Game 4 to remind America that they belonged in the finals, standing alongside the world’s best basketball team. Not only did they dominate Los Angeles, 111–86, but they sent a very clear message. Less than an hour after they once again kicked off the game with a kiss, Thomas and Johnson engaged in two heated exchanges. First, the Pistons point guard shoved his counterpart in the chest. Then, moments later, Johnson elbowed Thomas in the kidney. Thomas rose and threw the ball at Johnson before lunging for him.
“You see what I’ve been getting!” Johnson screamed. “Well, now I’m giving it back!”
The two were separated. “[Magic] made the statement that if I came through the lane he would smash me,” Thomas said. “I came through the lane; he smashed
me.”
Johnson insisted he wasn’t trying to make a statement to his chum. Years later, however, he changed his story. “I did target Isiah,” he said. “Pat Riley had questioned me in front of the guys whether I’d take him out. I needed to show them I was willing to do it.”
One night later, at approximately seven o’clock, Thomas found himself at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Pontiac, witnessing his wife, Lynn, deliver their first child, Joshua Isiah Thomas. Because Thomas was so hopped up on painkillers, Lynn was brought to the hospital by Sondra Nevitt, Chuck’s wife. The boy weighed six pounds, five and a half ounces, measured nineteen and a half inches and arrived two weeks earlier than expected.
When he entered the Silverdome for Game 5, Thomas was a walking zombie. He hadn’t slept, he’d barely eaten and his stiff back had him crookedly walking to and fro like the Tin Man. He was greeted at his locker by a dozen blue-and-white congratulatory balloons, the strings tied to his stool. When a reporter asked about Joshua, Thomas shushed him away. The Lakers, he noted, wouldn’t be offering handshakes and easy paths to the basket. In fact, Los Angeles’s players had used the in-between off day to watch tapes from Game 4. What they saw infuriated them. Thomas, Laimbeer, Rodman—all a bunch of provocative thugs. None, however, was worse than Mahorn, who clearly went out of his way to terrorize. The Lakers thought of him as one would a dumb, oversize school yard bully. Mahorn’s skills were raw and awkward—coming out of Weaver High in Hartford, Connecticut, he was better known as a potential Division I defensive lineman. He had not even participated in organized hoops until turning seventeen. “I’d messed around a little bit with basketball, but I never played in anything until my senior year of high school,” he said. “I’d been a fat kid and stayed with football until I grew.”
Based upon his size-power potential, Mahorn earned a scholarship to Hampton Institute, where he set eighteen school records by—in large part—being wider, tougher and more intense than the competition. When a ball came near, Mahorn went for it like a jaguar after a kill. He would either grab it or decapitate an opponent in trying.
The Washington Bullets saw enough to take him in the second round in 1980. Upon arriving in camp, he impaled as many as he impressed. Mahorn’s shooting touch was below average and his footwork atrocious. No one, however, set a meaner pick. “He just has a physical style,” said Gene Shue, the Bullets coach. “Of course, there are very few players who want to go against someone who is holding his ground. When you have a big body, and you’re as strong as Rick is, that’s how you should be playing.”
Opponents came to view Mahorn as Lucifer in high-tops. His on-court scowl (narrowed eyes, a sinister smile revealing the thin gap between his front teeth) doubled as a TREAD CAUTIOUSLY sign. “You’d think from looking at Mahorn that he’s an off-the-street type guy who’d knock your teeth out soon as look at you,” said Tom McMillen, a former teammate. “But obviously appearances are deceiving. He’s funny—he’s like a playful tiger off the court. I like him.”
The Lakers did not. The Game 4 tapes revealed one low blow and forearm shiver after another. For the four or five obvious infractions he committed in the course of the game, there were dozens that went unnoticed. “He can dish it out, but can he take it?” Johnson said. “He throws out all this cheap stuff, but he doesn’t want you to come back at him. Well, if it happens in Game 5, I’m going to have to hit him right back.”
This was what the Pistons loved to hear. The Lakers were tough to crack. Boston’s M. L. Carr and Cedric Maxwell had broken through in the 1984 NBA Finals, but Riley’s men generally remained controlled and calm. Yet Detroit brought out the worst in them. Before a playoff-record crowd of 41,732, Los Angeles jumped out to a 15–2 Game 5 lead, then watched helplessly as Dantley (25 points, 7 rebounds) and Co. chipped away. The Pistons out-rebounded the Lakers 53–31, and Rodman—overlooked on a team with bigger names—played the game of his life, holding Johnson to 4 of 15 shooting. Worthy spent the afternoon in foul trouble, and was limited to 14 points and twenty-six minutes. The Pistons walked off with a 104–94 victory, a 3-games-to-2 series lead and a special place in the minds of their opponents. It had never been a real possibility (to anyone but the Pistons) that the Lakers might lose. But here they sat, one game from elimination.
“I couldn’t even believe it,” said Tony Campbell, who played five minutes in the setback. “It didn’t register. We couldn’t lose. Could we?”
• • •
They could.
The Lakers were genuinely confused, and Riley was, too. He’d tried running past the Pistons, and that stalled. He tried muscling up the Pistons, and that was a joke, too. “We read in the papers the Lakers were going to bully us,” Rodman noted. “You don’t do that against us.” Riley’s pre-game speeches rotated between angry, compassionate, motivational and pleading. Nothing stuck. Mike Downey of the Los Angeles Times asked a fair question—whether Detroit, long denied of glory, was hungrier. “Who wanted it more?” he wrote after Game 5. “The Pistons wanted it more. They wanted it, and they got it.”
So . . . what now?
Answer: Italy.
In his meeting with reporters the day before Game 6, Riley said that—to hell with it—he was leaving for two weeks in Italy as soon as the series ended. “It’s a little villa in southern Italy,” he said. “While Jerry West is drafting next week, I’ll be . . .”
“Drafting beer!” someone shouted.
“Guaranteed!” Riley replied.
This wasn’t a hard one to decipher: The coach was so 100 percent, beyond-the-shadow-of-a-doubt certain the Lakers would win both games at the Forum that he could start dreaming of a bottle of Rosso di Montalcino alongside a plate of ravioli caprese. “I’m very confident,” he said. “The table is set for us right here. We have tremendous respect for the Pistons, but the one thing that’s obvious is, they had the chance to win it there and they didn’t do that.”
The coach’s words sounded great—until the game began. Los Angeles held a seven-point halftime lead behind the marvelous play of Worthy, who scored 19 points over the first two quarters. Yet Riley’s trapping defense was unable to contain the driving, swirling, slashing, popping Thomas. The Lakers were up 56–48 early in the third quarter when Detroit’s point guard went to work, scoring the Pistons’ next 16 points on a pair of free throws, a short jumper off an offensive rebound, four more jump shots, a bank shot and a layup. “He was just red hot,” said Johnson. “Unconscious.”
With three minutes remaining in the third quarter, however, Thomas passed to Dumars on a fast break, landed on Cooper’s left foot and crumpled to the court. His ankle—swollen and black-and-blue—was badly sprained. “I couldn’t believe this was happening to me,” he later said. “Not to me. Not now. Not fifteen minutes away from an NBA championship.” Blood dripped from a wound above his cheek. A finger had been dislocated. His vision was blurred from a poke to the eye. Thomas was helped off the floor, presumed to be done for the afternoon. Instead, to the audible groaning of 17,505 assembled Lakers fans, he checked himself back in thirty-five seconds later. By the time the quarter ended, Thomas had scored 25 points on 11 of 13 shooting—a record for points in one period. The Pistons were ahead, 81-79. “Detroit came in here,” Riley said, “and played their hearts out.”
The teams battled back and forth throughout the fourth quarter. It was the best stretch of the series—no hostility, no anger, no nonsense. Just exceptional basketball featuring three stars (Thomas, Johnson, Worthy) playing at Oscar Robertson–esque levels. With one minute remaining, the Pistons held a 102–99 lead, and it began to feel as if Riley’s guarantee would come up empty. CBS, which was televising the series, insisted the NBA transport the championship trophy into Detroit’s locker room so everything would be ready for the celebration. Bill Davidson, the CEO of Guardian Industries as well as the Pistons’ owner, entered the room. Hats and T-shirts were placed at each locker. Cases of champagn
e were wheeled inside. “We were in a position to do it,” Daly said. “We were in a good position.”
Eight seconds later, though, Scott stationed himself in the lane, leaned in over a hobbling Thomas and hit a twelve-footer, cutting the lead to a single point. On the subsequent Detroit possession, Thomas, who would finish with a stellar 43 points, 8 assists and 6 steals, forced up a fall-away baseline jumper that clanged off the rim and into the hands of Worthy. With twenty-seven seconds remaining, the Lakers called a time-out.
Johnson brought the ball down the court. He had no open look. Neither did Worthy or Scott. The pass went down low to Abdul-Jabbar, an increasingly forgotten man. He turned to release his skyhook along the right baseline, and was hacked by Laimbeer. The ball missed, but he hit both free throws. Lakers 103, Pistons 102.
Daly diagrammed a final play—a pass to Thomas, who would take the shot. However, while running his route, he collided with Dantley. The ball went to Dumars, and his double-pump banker at the other end missed. Scott rebounded the ball and was fouled. He missed both shots, then held his breath as the Pistons failed to get off a last-second desperation heave. The Lakers survived.
“That was probably the most interesting, exciting game I’ve ever played in,” Johnson said. “It tops the Boston experience [Game 4, a one-point L.A. win] of last year’s finals. That says a lot.”
When Game 6 ended, it was presumed that Thomas would be unavailable for the finale. His ankle was the size and shade of an especially large blueberry muffin. It was also widely presumed the Lakers would win. They had endured the Pistons’ fiercest punch—what could possibly be left? Especially with an injured star, on the road, against an experienced and battle-tested opponent.
Detroit, though, received help from an unlikely source. Even though Al Davis, the Los Angeles Raiders’ outlaw owner, was a semiregular attendee of Laker games, he felt a kinship with Detroit’s attitude and approach. Civic loyalty? To hell with civic loyalty. For the next two days, he instructed his entire training staff to cater to Thomas and the Pistons. The Lakers had offered help in the form of a bucket of ice. The Raiders, on the other hand, opened their facility to Thomas. Trainers placed him in the dreaded “Boot”—an enormous plastic shoe, filled with ice and water, that acted as a cold-compression unit. If Thomas wasn’t inside his room at the Airport Marriott in his boot, he was with the football staff in his boot. “I’ll never forget the help they gave me,” Thomas later wrote. “Their trainers tried every conceivable method to alleviate the pain and swelling.”
Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty ofthe 1980s Page 43