With the Heat On, Lakers Do Slow Burn : Pistons Draw the Line, Even Series at 2 Each

The Detroit Pistons turned up the heat and stripped down to the essentials Tuesday night, leaving brotherly love to take a header and the Lakers to take a 111-86 belly-flop in Game 4 of the National Basketball Assn. Finals.

What started sweetly with a kiss--Isiah Thomas’ peck on Magic Johnson’s cheek before the opening jump--ended with the fury of a forearm shiver. Best friends nearly came to blows--Thomas shoved Johnson after catching a Magic elbow on a fourth-quarter drive--but that was nothing compared to the tap-dance the Pistons did on Laker heads all night long.

The Lakers, who could have been one game away from a championship, now find themselves tied, 2-2, in the best-of-seven series after a 25-point licking, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in the finals since 1985, when the Lakers beat the Boston Celtics by 25. And before they can go home, the Lakers still have another date Thursday in the Silverdome, where the temperature read 90 degrees and tempers nearly went off the Richter scale.

“You don’t see that very often--Magic go running at somebody,” said Piston center Bill Laimbeer, who usually is in the storm center of trouble but Tuesday was an unlikely peacemaker, stepping between Johnson and Thomas.

“But this is a hotly contested series,” Laimbeer said. “Both teams are now sure they can win.

“Both teams are getting a little chippy. Tempers are on edge.”

Chippy, for the 99% of Southern Californians who have never been to an ice rink, is a hockey term. And while no gloves were dropped or sticks raised, there were enough skirmishes to make “Rambo III” look like a Gothic romance.

“We had to come out and bump them tonight,” said James Edwards, the Pistons’ 7-foot backup center. “(Rick) Mahorn started bumping them, then A.D. (Adrian Dantley), then everybody was bumping them.”

The Detroit bumpers bashed in the Laker fenders in the third quarter, when the Pistons took advantage of Magic Johnson’s departure with four fouls to extend a 58-51 halftime lead to 83-65, as the Lakers scored a team playoff-low 14 points in the quarter.

Johnson went to the bench with his fourth foul with 7:03 left in the period and the Lakers down, 70-61. The Lakers scored four points and one basket for the rest of the period, while Thomas--whose sore back made him a questionable starter--stuck in a three-point dagger to close the period.

Johnson returned at the top of the fourth quarter and tried to take on the Pistons single-handedly--he scored the Lakers’ first nine points of the period--but on this night, he was overmatched. If Game 3 Sunday was a Magic homecoming, this was Magic--and the rest of the Lakers--held hostage.

“He’s too nice a guy,” Detroit Coach Chuck Daly had joked before the game. “I wish he’d slap one of our players. We need to develop some hate for the guy.”

Who’d have thought that little buddy Thomas would be the guy to mix it up with Magic?

“He had said before the series that if I was coming through the lane, he’d slam me,” said Thomas, who had only 2 baskets and 10 points but added 12 assists and 9 rebounds. “Well, I came through the lane and he slammed me.”

Long before the Thomas-Johnson flare-up, however, the Lakers had fizzled.

“We looked like elephants sloshing through a swamp tonight,” said Mychal Thompson. “In Game 3, we were like cheetahs running across the plain.”

Piston forward John Salley, who rejected another Thompson layup, wondered how it was that Thompson saw a wild kingdom Tuesday.

“Who does he think he is, Mutual of Omaha?” Salley said. “The only thing that was African about this game is that it was Africa hot.”

The Lakers wilted quickly in the tropical heat, with a defense that was as soft in the middle as an avocado. The Pistons, who had relied on their perimeter shooters in the first three games, pounded the ball inside with great success Tuesday, either getting a basket or going to the free-throw line.

The Pistons, who shot just 12 free throws to the Lakers’ 34 on Sunday, went to the line twice that many times in the first half alone and finished with 46 free throws, converting 36. The Lakers made 28 of 37.

Dantley led the Pistons with 27 points--13 on free throws--and Vinnie Johnson came off the bench to score 16 and Edwards 14.

“We moved the ball much faster tonight,” Laimbeer said. “When you move the ball faster you create holes in their trapping defense. They try to rotate so fast, they go right by guys cutting into the lanes, and you can punch the ball inside.”

The Lakers fell behind, 21-12, in the first quarter, then responded with a 10-0 run to retake the lead, but their last lead was 24-23 with 2:14 to go in the opening period. By the next quarter, Laker Coach Pat Riley was screaming at his players in a huddle during a timeout, accusing them of moving in slow motion.

“Our defense wasn’t as quick and defined and as tough as it had been in the first three games,” Riley said. “I’m not going to cry about anything, because we didn’t deserve anything. We came with a weak mind-set.”

The Pistons, meanwhile, came in the frame of mind they’re famous for--nasty. That’s one reason Thompson wasn’t surprised to see Thomas and Johnson nearly square off.

“Even though they’re as close as brothers,” Thompson said, “brothers do fight. They’re both at the dinner table, getting ready to feast, and it’s like somebody trying to steal the last piece of meat.”

The Pistons couldn’t let that happen, Salley said, not here.

“It’s like someone coming into your home and trying to steal something from you,” Salley said. “We take it personally. It makes us play better. And it makes us angrier.”

So, the night ended with James Worthy--who drew 3 quick fouls and had just 7 points (3-of-9 shooting)--sitting out the entire fourth quarter. Byron Scott, who had just 13 points and 4 fouls, sat out the last 5:06. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who had 13 points, sat out the last 17:06. Johnson, who had 23 points and just one more assist (6) than fouls (5), watched the last 4:55.

They all got to see former Laker Chuck Nevitt, Abdul-Jabbar’s 7-5 former backup, throw in a skyhook in the game’s last minute.

“I told Nevitt he should have pointed at Kareem,” Salley said gleefully. “He learned it from him.”

The lesson of this series--in which no game has been decided by fewer than 12 points--is that there’s no telling what will happen Thursday.

“They should put these playoffs in syndication and call them The Playoffs That Never Ended,” Thompson said. “I keep looking around to see if Rod Serling is announcing these games.”

Championship Notes

Piston center Bill Laimbeer, on Coach Chuck Daly’s tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the Pistons needed to “hate” Magic Johnson: “A little bit, that’s part of it. Magic lulls you, he’s smiling at you all the time, and all of a sudden he breaks you with 8 or 10 points in a row while telling you, ‘Yeah, good defense.’ You can’t let him be like that. You’ve got to hate him a little.” . . . The Lakers scored just 35 points in the last two quarters, a team playoff low for a half. . . . The Pistons held an opponent under 100 for the 14th time in 20 playoff games. . . . How big is Thursday’s game? The team that won Game 5 after a 2-2 split has gone on to win 13 finals and has lost only 4. . . . Laker Coach Pat Riley drew a technical from referee Jack Madden in the fourth quarter. . . . Riley, asked if he regretted keeping Magic on the bench in the third quarter: “He had four fouls. If you keep him in when we’re in a situation where we have to play pressure defense, he’d get his fifth. I thought about it with a couple of minutes left after we’d gotten it down to 12, but then they scored a couple of times.”

Several Lakers received early morning wakeup calls Tuesday after a Detroit radio station revealed where the team was staying. Radio station WHYT announced during a broadcast that the Lakers were staying at the Guest Quarters Hotel in Troy, Mich., and invited their listeners to call them. . . . Laker owner Jerry Buss attended Tuesday night’s game at the Silverdome. Buss’ flight from Los Angeles arrived here four hours late and he drove straight from Detroit Metropolitan Airport to the game, arriving about an hour before tipoff. It was the first playoff game that Buss had attended on the road this season.