Ill-Timed Whistle Puts Stop to Pistons’ Late Run

Did that fourth-quarter Kareem Abdul-Jabbar skyhook hit the rim or did it merely hit the sky? Round up witnesses, totally nonpartisan, of course.

One opinion: “It was so far out over the rim, it was almost out of the building,” Piston Coach Chuck Daly said.

Laker Coach Pat Riley, who offered a second opinion, thought Daly’s eyes must be failing him.

“Hey, Chuck was at the other end of the floor,” Riley said.

So there you have Game 2, in which the biggest play of the game between the Lakers and Pistons was not made by Magic Johnson or James Worthy or any other Laker.

It was made by a clock.

Know about the Laker clock? Wind it up and you gain five seconds. The Piston clock? Wind that thing up and you lose a dunk. Perhaps even a ballgame.

“We’ve got buzzard’s luck,” Piston center Bill Laimbeer said.

Ah, yes. Something’s in the air besides a hook shot. A refreshing gust of controversy blew into the National Basketball Assn. championship series in Thursday night’s 108-96 Laker victory at the Forum when a reset 24-second clock, apparently correctly, and an official’s whistle, apparently incorrectly, took away a sure breakaway dunk by the Pistons’ Dennis Rodman.

For the Pistons, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. With 1:39 left in the game and the Lakers clutching a shaky 97-92 lead that looked unsafe at any speed, Abdul-Jabbar launched a skyhook.

Everyone agrees on this, which is good, because afterward, no one agrees on anything.

Timekeeper Gary Herman, who operates the 24-second shot clock, judged that the ball had struck the side of the rim, thereby counting as an attempted shot, and reset the clock to 24 seconds at the same time Worthy got the rebound.

Rodman got in front of Byron Scott, swiped Worthy’s pass, and just then, he thought his time had truly come.

But no. An instant before Rodman took off for what he thought would be a once-in-a-lifetime dunk, official Jess Kersey blew his whistle.

Kersey said the 24-second clock had been reset in error because Abdul-Jabbar’s shot had not touched the rim.

For the Lakers, it was good timing. They got the ball, five seconds on the clock and, ultimately, two more points when Johnson was fouled and made two free throws seven seconds later.

This is what you call a four-point swing. Instead of being down by three points and charging, the Pistons dropped behind by seven points and scored only four more to lose going away.

The Lakers didn’t get the hook, but the Pistons sure thought they got the shaft.

“Don’t fault the referees, fault their scorekeeper,” Laimbeer said. “That definitely turned momentum around. A steal puts us three points down, and instead they got two free throws and they’re up by seven.”

Television replays indicated that Herman made the correct decision to reset the 24-second clock because Abdul-Jabbar’s shot appeared to graze the far side of the rim.

So the actual correct call would have been for Kersey not to blow his whistle. That means Rodman should have had his steal and the dunk he was preparing himself for.

“He had the dunk of all times,” said Piston forward John Salley.

Rodman gauged his missed dunk opportunity by degrees.

“I was going to do something--360, 180, I don’t know,” Rodman said. “I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness. A breakaway.’ ”

Rodman grimaced when he heard the whistle, which he said he did as Worthy released the pass, but he continued to run to the Laker basket anyway before he finally stopped and returned to give up the ball.

“I was going to run out of the building,” Rodman said. “I thought, ‘This is ridiculous.’ ”

Now that the best-of-seven series is tied 1-1, several Pistons agreed with Rodman. Sad stuff, indeed. “That hurt us a lot,” Isiah Thomas said. “We get that basket and it’s a three-point game. But after that, they got regrouped.”

The degree of injury the Pistons suffered by the play was discounted by Riley, who thought time was running out on them, anyway.

“We were still ahead in a five-point game,” he said. “Even if we had turned it over, we were doing all right. It was a big call, though.”

Daly didn’t call it big. He called it something else.

“It was a blown call, the officials thought so,” Daly said. “It put us in a very tough position. We had fought back, and we would have been in a position to win the game with one more field goal.”