THE NBA CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES : LOS ANGELES LAKERS vs. DETROIT PISTONS : Pistons Turn On Heat and Start Cookin’ : Dantley, Vinnie Johnson Help Put Lakers Into Microwave, 105-93

Without lifting so much as a single finger in anger, the Detroit Pistons drew first blood in the National Basketball Assn. finals Tuesday night, when for the first time in memory, a Forum crowd stuck around longer than the Lakers did.

The rush to the limousines didn’t begin until midway through the fourth quarter, a show of admirable restraint, inasmuch as the Lakers called it a night in the last three seconds of the first half.

That’s when the Pistons blind-sided the Lakers with a lethal but legal weapon--three-point shots by Bill Laimbeer and Isiah Thomas that put the Lakers in a 17-point hole from which they never resurfaced in a 105-93 defeat.

Chick Hearn may not have been prepared to put this game into Detroit’s refrigerator at intermission, but the Pistons were more than willing to pop the Lakers into the Microwave, as guard Vinnie Johnson is known.

By the time Johnson was through heating up, coming off the bench to score the last seven points of the third quarter, including a buzzer-beating three-pointer while double-teamed, the Lakers were done twice over.

In handing the Lakers their first loss in a home playoff opener since 1981, the Pistons took a 1-0 lead in what they hope will be Championship Year 1 A.D.--as in Adrian Dantley, who never won a title as a Laker but won the battle of the initials with A.C. Green by scoring 34 points, missing just 2 of 16 shots.

But as daunting as Dantley was--and the Detroit forward scored 12 straight Piston points in the fourth quarter to defuse any thoughts of a Laker comeback--the Lakers did themselves in at the end of the half.

First, Laimbeer was left alone to drill a three-point jumper from the corner, then Thomas intercepted Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s inbounds pass near midcourt, took a couple of dribbles, and threw in a 26-foot runner that had the Pistons running off the court with fists raised.

“We really stuck it to the Lakers going into the half,” Vinnie Johnson said. “It was like the game was over, mentally.”

Even if the Lakers had gotten their heads back into the game, they still may not have had a shot, for the simple reason they couldn’t hit any. Abdul-Jabbar’s skyhook seemed more suited for the Smithsonian than the finals, as he missed his first seven attempts, finished with just eight points, and sat on the bench for the last 15:16.

Michael Cooper came off the bench and missed three shots in about 30 seconds, and all six shots he took in the first half. Cooper let fly only once more in the game, a three-point airball, and went scoreless in 23 minutes, his first playoff shutout since May 5, 1985.

Magic Johnson, who had 28 points, carried the first-half load almost by himself, especially after James Worthy--who finished with 19 points--was forced to take a nearly 10-minute break after suffering a hip pointer in the first quarter.

“It was kind of a tough situation,” Johnson said. “Just nothing was dropping. I can’t remember (Abdul-Jabbar) missing so many like that.

“I sat there and said, ‘OK, he’s going to hit this one,’ but he didn’t. They were taking him with single coverage, but he just couldn’t get it to fall.

“From that, it seemed contagious. It went over to everybody.”

That included Byron Scott, who recovered from a 3-for-10 first half to score 25 points. And nowhere was it more apparent than in the disparity between the benches, with Detroit’s substitutes sinking their Laker counterparts, Cooper and Mychal Thompson, 32-4.

The Lakers shot just 39.8%, and their total of 93 points was their third fewest of the playoffs, just marginally better than their 80 and 89-point efforts against the Utah Jazz in the Western Conference semifinals.

As the Boston Celtics could have warned them, this isn’t anything new for the Pistons. Detroit has now held its opposition to under 100 points in its last 5 games, and in 9 of its last 10.

Tuesday night, the Pistons blocked six shots to the Lakers’ none. Victimized twice within a one-minute span was Thompson, who had shots rejected by Dennis Rodman and James Edwards.

“I don’t think they were prepared well enough for the tough defense we play,” Laimbeer said. “Our defense has done it for us all playoffs, and it came through again tonight.”

The Lakers could hardly have been ready for the way the Pistons opened the game by hitting their first six shots to take a 14-4 lead in the first four minutes.

The Lakers recovered from that, but Coach Pat Riley all but abandoned his plan to double-team Dantley. That left him free to operate on Green, who was in need of a transfusion by the time Dantley was through draining him.

“They’re not as big as Boston,” Dantley said. “That makes it a little bit easier to get to the hole, even though they’re quicker than Boston.”

Getting over the Boston bugaboo made this night much easier than one might have expected for a team that had never played in the finals in the 31 years it has been located in Detroit.

“We were very relaxed,” Dantley said. “I talked to a lot of the guys, and everybody is sleeping better. When we play Boston, nobody was sleeping at all.”

The Lakers, of course, picked the strangest time to take a snooze when they nodded off before the half. Green failed to rotate out to the corner to pick up Laimbeer, who likes to pop from outside as much as he likes bumping inside. Then Abdul-Jabbar got careless with the in-bounds pass.

“That changed the whole game,” Magic Johnson said. “We just made mental mistakes. We did what we were supposed to do defensively, we swung over to the other side, but I don’t know why he (Green) left a shooter open.

“And then we (Abdul-Jabbar) threw the pass away. You can’t let playoff games get away like that.”

The Lakers fell behind by as much as 19, 94-75, when Rodman fed Dantley for a lay-in with 5:30 to go, and while Magic Johnson hit two three-pointers to fuel a late 16-4 run that cut the lead to 7, 98-91, with 1:23 to go, the issue already had been decided.

And while the series is still up for grabs, of course, the Pistons have to be encouraged by the fact that the winner of Game 1 has gone on to win the title 29 times in 41 finals. The Lakers hadn’t lost an opener since the 148-114 Boston Massacre in 1985.

They came back to win that series. But they hadn’t lost a home opener since going down 111-107 to Houston in a mini-series the Rockets won in three games.

“Our backs,” Cooper said, “are against the wall very early.”