When the Bulls show up Tuesday in Auburn Hills, Mich., for Game 5 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series, there should be a coffin in the middle of the locker room as the players gather quietly before the start of the game. Suddenly, the lid would begin to creak and open slowly. Then Scott Skiles would jump out and scream:
“We ain’t dead yet!”
If the sight of that doesn’t loosen up the players, then they would be dead.
It’s what I’d do, because even as the Detroit Pistons go home comfortably and confidently despite a 102-87 loss Sunday, the Bulls should be sitting on two blowout wins and an even series. Sure, they’re down 3-1 and headed into what most everyone seems to believe is certain elimination. But they’ve risen from the dead before.
“They came and played exceptionally hard,” said Pistons guard Chauncey Billups, who fought through foul trouble for a team-high 23 points. “They weren’t ready to go home. They’ve had a great season, sweeping Miami. Getting swept in the second round, they were not trying to have that happen. They came and fought.
“We do have a second gear. We had to use it (in cutting a 21-point fourth-quarter deficit to seven with 3 minutes 55 seconds left). I wish we wouldn’t have. I wish we would have been on the pedal from the start. We weren’t and have to learn from that.
“Sometimes you create such a cushion it’s easy to let your guard down. You get a 3-0 cushion and you say that team has to beat us four straight. It’s a bad situation to be in sometimes. You can’t let your guard down like we did. We’ve got to refocus.”
As Billups spoke in the locker room and Pistons players dressed, music blared relentlessly from a portable player. Rasheed Wallace sang and said the team would be ready “Tuesday or Wednesday, whenever the game is.” Old friends mingled with the players.
That is the Pistons’ flaw.
It’s not their post defense, which was weak again with Chris Webber scoreless. It’s not their lack of a true go-to scorer or star off the bench.
It’s that they don’t always take the games or their opponents seriously.
Like losing three in a row after two easy wins at home over Cleveland in last year’s playoffs amid finger-pointing. Like Sunday, when Rasheed Wallace lofted a dozen three-pointers of the team’s 25 and hit two. Like when they came out of halftime, aware they’d come back from 19 down in the third quarter of Game 3 to win and scored one basket in 12 possessions — that on a three — and were down 19 again.
Yup, got them right where we want them.
Not this time, though the Pistons, playing with urgency to open the fourth quarter, gave the Bulls a scare in getting to within seven. But Kirk Hinrich drew a charge on Billups, and Ben Gordon threw in a three to keep the Bulls alive.
“If we run a play and [score], maybe we cut it to four or five and can squeeze them from there,” Billups said.
When asked whether the Pistons, with seven straight playoff wins, took their foot off the gas, Billups replied, “It’s fair to say.”
Most Detroit questions reference the auto industry.
“This is the first time we kind of let our guard down,” Billups said. “The positive thing about it is when we started to play and doing what we do, we changed the face of the game. We just couldn’t get over the hump.”
That either persuaded the Pistons even more they could turn it on whenever they wanted, or it frightened them enough to come with passion Tuesday night.
We’ll see.
The Pistons were bemoaning foul trouble, as the Bulls have an amazing plus-37 margin in free-throw attempts in the series despite being outscored by 39. Detroit’s Achilles’ heel may have been exposed in losing Billups six minutes into the game, since they have no true backup point guard and their offense stagnates.
The Bulls have trapped on and off in the series to get the ball out of Billups’ hands, though having him sitting on the bench worked better.
There was some talk among the Pistons’ players of not switching defenses enough, though that zone seemed less effective with shots going in. And Pistons coach Flip Saunders seemed to get a little overconfident himself.
Saunders went to the bench quickly and stayed with it a surprisingly long time, using 10 players to eight for the Bulls. Luol Deng never went out, and Hinrich played just under 46 minutes. The Pistons’ key players, Billups and Richard Hamilton, each played fewer than 36 minutes.
“We cannot play the way we played tonight and expect to win anywhere,” Saunders said. “The crowd is not going to score any field goals. We got out of character. Now we’ve got a series. Both teams have been beat. We’re going to have to go out and earn it.”
