THE NBA PLAYOFFS : How Low Can It Get? 79-78 Win Revives the Celtics

On a day when the Detroit Pistons could not throw the basketball into the basket when they tried--and did throw the basketball into the basket once when they didn’t try--they got off one last shot, one last heave at the hoop, that could have basically put the Boston Celtics out of Detroit’s 30-year misery.

It meant everything.

It also missed everything.

An airball by Joe Dumars--thought by certain parties to be goaltending on Boston’s Robert Parish--brought to an end a dog-game afternoon that truly did turn out to be Memorial Day in Michigan. The Celtics took advantage of Detroit’s brick-by-brick 33% shooting Monday to win Game 4 of the National Basketball Assn.’s Eastern Conference finals by the ugly little score of 79-78, leaving this best-of-seven series--just like the one between the Lakers and Dallas Mavericks--even at two games apiece.

The telltale point of this battle of attrition turned out to be Dennis Johnson’s free throw with eight seconds to play. Yet, that’s not what beat the Pistons, and they know it.

“We beat ourselves,” center Bill Laimbeer lamented. “We gotta do everything the hard way.”

First came Kevin McHale’s three-pointer that saved Game 2 for Boston. This time, some of the Pistons argued that Parish prematurely intercepted Dumars’ last-second shot. Had one referee overruled another in either instance, the Pistons would be studying their Laker-Maverick scouting reports this morning.

Instead, the home-court advantage reverts to Boston, winner of 16 of the last 31 NBA championships, and is stripped from Detroit, winner of zero NBA championships since moving here from Fort Wayne, Ind., in time for the 1957-58 season. Wednesday’s Game 5 at the Garden goes off at 5 p.m., PDT, putting the Pistons right smack back where they started.

They might yet be reeling from manic Monday. At the Silverdome, where they had beaten the Celtics nine straight times, the only basket the Pistons could throw anything into was the wastebasket, which is exactly what they did with copies of the final box score. During one stretch of the first half, they missed 20 straight shots. They went from off-target to awful to aw-come-on-this-is-ridiculous. And, the Celtics weren’t much better. It was basketball without baskets. It was a game that belonged in a YMCA.

Not since 1956 and a Fort Wayne Pistons game against the Syracuse Nationals have any two NBA outfits combined for fewer points in a playoff game. That one was 74-71, Pistons. There was another one just as pathetic as this one, a 1981 snoozer between Phoenix and Kansas City in which only 157 points were scored--but, aside from paying NBA membership dues, those two teams were hardly in the same league as these teams. These teams are ordinarily thought to be pretty good.

You thought the Utah Jazz looked impotent back in its eight-point first period against the Lakers? You should have seen this thing. (On second thought, you shouldn’t have.) Boston got 16 points in the first quarter--and led when it was over by 6! It took Detroit 10 minutes 11 seconds and 20 rim-clankers and airballs from the time Laimbeer made a long jump shot with 7:56 remaining in the opening quarter to the time John Salley sank a 6-foot turnaround 9:45 before halftime.

Piston point guard Isiah Thomas was asked if his teammates were hesitating before they shot.

He smiled, grimly.

“When they did, you didn’t mind,” Thomas said, “because everybody was missing.”

He included himself among the guilty. Thomas was 6 of 20. Which at least was better than Adrian Dantley’s 2 of 9. Which definitely was better than Dumars’ 1 of 10. Only Laimbeer, a dead-eye all day, seemed to have a feel for what he was doing out there--so what did Laimbeer do with 3 seconds to play and a wide-open shot to win the game?

He passed off.

To Dumars.

The coldest man in the sauna-hot Silverdome.

Who let go from, oh, maybe 14, 15 feet.

Hitting nothing but air.

Parish caught the ball. It was dangerously close to the rim. How close depended on your vantage point.

Let’s hear from:

Laimbeer: “It was definitely goaltending. Parish does that all the time. He catches the ball in front of the rim. Even if it brushes the front of the rim, the ball might do something crazy. He has to leave it alone.”

Official Ed Rush: “The prerequisite for goaltending is that the ball has to have a chance to go into the basket. The defensive player, Robert Parish, pulled the ball straight down. As he did, the ball ticked the front of the rim. It was short. The ball was clearly outside the rim. It would not have gone into the basket. Therefore, it was definitely not goaltending.”

Dumars: “No, I don’t think it was (goaltending). It looked short, from where I was.”

Parish, offering the last word on the subject, did his ever-popular Indian Chief impersonation. He was stoic.

“Was it short?” Parish was asked.

The Chief nodded.

“By much?” he was asked.

The Chief held his palms a foot apart.

Well, Parish seldom does see eye-to-eye with Laimbeer. Nor does Larry Bird, who did see a chance to get in a dig, and took it. Bird said he couldn’t believe Laimbeer passed up that last shot, especially since he had been hitting it all day.

“I would have taken that shot if I was 0 for 300,” Bird crowed.

Bird himself had his best shooting eye of the series, although he still missed more than half his shots. He led the Celtics with 20 points. Because of his sorry bench, Coach K.C. Jones did not make a substitution in the last 9 1/2 minutes, and Bird had to work all of that time with 5 fouls.

Laimbeer’s 29 points accounted for more than a third of Detroit’s total. Only two others were in double figures. Seven of their shots were blocked. Most of them didn’t need to be. They weren’t going in, anyway.

The amazing thing was that having fallen behind by 14 points during their laughable first half, the Pistons found themselves leading, 53-52, scarcely six minutes into the second half. After three quarters, they had blown it open to 68-60. Somehow, they were about to win this thing going away, after starting out like the five stooges.

Boston wouldn’t go down, though. Daly compared the Celtics to Glenn Close’s character in the movie “Fatal Attraction,” who wouldn’t die, even when she appeared to have drowned. “All of a sudden, boo! They just jump back up at you,” Daly said.

That they did. Making a last stand, they outscored the Pistons, 13-3.

K.C. Jones called it “one of the weirdest games, weirdest turnarounds I’ve ever been in.”

Here’s the weird finish:

Laimbeer tipped in one of Dumars’ many misses. Detroit, 78-76, 2:13 left. Dennis Johnson connected from 17 feet. Tied, with 1:13 to go.

What happened next described Detroit’s day in a nutshell. The Pistons couldn’t get a clear shot. The ball was cornered, with no way out, but Thomas wisely called a timeout. There were 50 seconds left in the game but only 2 on the shot clock.

Adrian Dantley threw in the inbounds pass.

Into the basket.

All day long, the Pistons couldn’t throw the ball into the hoop, and suddenly Dantley sinks one from out of bounds. Salley tried to tip the alley-oop pass in, but oop, too late. The ball already was in the hole.

So were the Pistons. It was Boston’s ball, now, with a chance to go ahead. Ainge nearly double-dribbled. DJ missed a 12-footer. The crowd breathed a sign of relief. Except, McHale came down with the rebound. The Celtics still had the ball, plus a new 24-second clock.

After a timeout, Thomas tried to steal it from Johnson, but bumped into him with eight seconds remaining in the game. DJ, perfect at the line until then, missed the first free throw. The second was true.

On defense, Boston had a foul to spare but didn’t use it. Thomas, with the ball, was hounded by Ainge. He intended to shoot, but Bird double-teamed him.

He passed to Laimbeer. “I knew once I passed it, I wasn’t going to get it back,” Thomas said. “I was hoping Bill would shoot it, because he was the only one we had who was making them.”

Laimbeer considered it. He was 18 feet away, in his favorite spot. McHale, though, made a lunge at him.

He passed to Dumars. “I thought he had the shot, until I saw McHale go flying at him,” Dumars said. “I had to put it up real quick, and it came up short.”

Did it feel short?

“No. It felt good,” Dumars said.

The Pistons, and their fans, were left, as Dumars put it, “stunned and disappointed.”

Salley was asked how he saw the game’s last shot.

“With my eyes,” he said, sneering.

It wasn’t an easy game to watch.

Playoff Notes

Boston’s bench scored 1 point. . . . Assistant coach Jimmy Rodgers, who will run the Celtics next season, was struck in the face after the game by a chunk of ice, thrown by a fan. Team physician Ed Lacerte got hit in the neck by a coin. . . . Rodgers, saying he was unhurt, looked up after being splattered and said: “Must be birds in here.” . . . Speaking of which, Larry Bird denied rumors that mononucleosis has been responsible for his recent slump. Bird says he’s fine. He has played 40 or more minutes in every Boston 1988 postseason game. . . .

The first quarter was the lowest scoring opening quarter in NBA playoff history. . . . A San Francisco chiropractor, Dr. Murray Callier, who usually treats the Pistons only on West Coast trips, made a special trip to Michigan to attend to several players. “Isiah (Thomas) paid half my airfare,” Callier said. . . . It was 95 degrees in Michigan and about that hot in the Silverdome.