NBA PLAYOFFS : SECOND WIND IN CHICAGO? : Pistons Have Taken the Air Out of Jordan and the Bulls

The Chicago Bulls are as exhausted as Sparky Anderson. They are plumb tuckered out. They have labored through 16 playoff games to the Detroit Pistons’ 13, and poor Michael Jordan’s tongue is just about touching the stadium floor, because he does not have the same reinforcements the Piston starters do. (Who does?)

Jordan is working 43.4 minutes a game in the Eastern Conference finals, Scottie Pippen 39.8 on a bad foot.

Nobody from the Pistons is averaging 40 minutes, and only one guy, Isiah Thomas, is playing more than 35. Even Thomas got to sit back like Tom Sawyer and let somebody else--Vinnie Johnson--handle his chores during the last 11 minutes of Detroit’s 94-85 success in Game 5 Wednesday night.

Detroit’s players are pampered. They even get to make trips on their own team airplane, Roundball One. They take their time, ride in style, leave when they want. There are no such friendly skies for Air Jordan. He’s lucky Detroit and Chicago are only an hour apart.

Yep, the Bulls are weary, punchy, too pooped to pop. They got off only 59 shots in Game 5, an all-time National Basketball Assn. playoff low. The Pistons are eager, energetic matadors, poised with their swords. They can do away with the Bulls tonight, clinching a rematch with the Lakers, when Game 6 tips off at Chicago Stadium at 6 p.m., Pacific time.

“We’re fresh as daisies,” Detroit forward John Salley said. “Fresher.”

Not a soul on the Pistons’ starting front line is averaging even 30 minutes a night. Rick Mahorn, in fact, is averaging 17. At this rate, Chuck Daly’s regulars are going to be as well-rested for the NBA Finals as Pat Riley’s. The Pistons don’t need a bench. They need a hammock. Some of them sit around on the sidelines shooting the breeze like those guys in the TV commercials for Dockers pants. Mahorn, a starter, talks more than plays.

In the Windy City, meanwhile, what the Bulls are counting on, for tonight at least, is a familiar environment and a rush of old-fashioned second wind. That might get them through the night.

Another loud, rowdy, capacity crowd will occupy Chicago Stadium--some creep threw a rum bottle onto the court during Game 4, and Detroit’s traveling fans have been describing other horrifying treatment by Chicago’s customers--and although Coach Doug Collins does not advocate disorder, he is looking for a certain kind of lift.

“What we need is for our home crowd to electrocute us,” Collins malapropped.

Electri fy, Doug. Electri fy.

His cattle are tired, and need prodding. Those down-to-the-last-minute struggles against Cleveland and New York were exhilarating, but what the Bulls could really use is a blowout, because they sure aren’t going to get a rainout. With an easy win, they could rest Jordan a little; maybe Pippen, too. Only, who blows out Detroit? The Pistons have kept opponents under100 points in 14 straight games.

None of the five series games played so far has been settled until the final minutes. Chicago’s 24-point edge in Game 1 quickly disintegrated. It might even have helped the Bulls had the Pistons beaten their brains out Wednesday, but even on Jordan’s 18-point night, the Bulls led at halftime and remained within five points with three minutes left.

“I gave Michael a two-minute breather early in the game, and was going to give him another rest toward the end of the third quarter,” Collins said. “But that’s when he made his only little spurt of the night. You can’t take out Michael Jordan just when he starts to heat up.”

Jordan scored 10 of Chicago’s last 12 points in the third period.

In the fourth period, he scored one.

“I’m not tired. I am not tired. Read my lips,” Jordan swore, smiling wanly. “I may look tired, but I promise you, I am not.

“I didn’t stop shooting because I couldn’t raise my arms. I stopped shooting because I couldn’t get a clean shot off with three Detroit guys in my face.”

In a league that prohibits anything but man-to-man combat and punishes teams with technical fouls for using “illegal” defenses, Jordan finds himself drawing Pistons the way a porch light draws moths. About the only break he has had is that Joe Dumars, not Dennis Rodman, guards him most of the time. Rodman is two inches taller than Jordan and just as fast, if not faster. He is giving Jordan fits, as well as killing Chicago on the boards, in his nightly 25-minute stints.

“You can call me Dennis the Rebounding Menace,” said Rodman, whose confidence and ego are growing daily.

Electing not to break up an act that has won 73 of 94 games, Daly continues to start a front line of Bill Laimbeer, Mark Aguirre and Rick Mahorn, and finish with a front line of James Edwards, Salley and Rodman. Even if Rodman started, he wouldn’t guard Jordan, because Dumars doesn’t match up with the taller Pippen.

Vinnie Johnson, no taller but more muscular than Dumars, can handle that assignment when he enters the game at guard. That frees Rodman to tag after Jordan like a dog on a mailman.

“Rodman, he’s something,” said Aguirre, who was so impressed with his teammate during Game 4 at Chicago that he told Daly to go with Rodman at the start of the second half rather than with himself.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a guy who goes after his man so--what?--so . . . “

Relentlessly?

“There’s a good word for it,” Aguirre said. “Rodman never lets up, never lets you out of his sight. He stays with you like he’s handcuffed to you.”

Also, with his reputation as a defensive expert expanding, Rodman no longer is a mere substitute who cannot convince referees of his abilities. Like a league-leading hitter who gets the outside corner, Rodman often gets the benefit of charging calls when he goes recoiling after being struck by an opponent’s elbow. Funny how those elbows can knock a healthy, 6-foot 8-inch man five feet backward or even off his feet, isn’t it?

The Bulls are too tired to argue.

“I know we’re dragging,” Collins said. “No matter what great shape these guys are in, they’ve been going at it through preseason camp, exhibition games, 82 regular-schedule games and 16 grueling playoff games, with practices in between. Not one of them is complaining about it. It’s just a fact of life.

“I’ll tell you this, though: If we get a chance to go play the Lakers, we’re not going to call them up and say, ‘Hey, guys, we’re too tired to come play. Let’s do it in July.’ We’ll be there.”

First things first.

Playoff Notes

Piston assistant coach Brendan Malone, a native New Yorker, is a candidate for the Knicks’ job vacated by Rick Pitino. “It would be the stuff that dreams are made of,” Malone said. “It’d be the perfect script for a B movie.” . . . Three of Chuck Daly’s former assistants hold head coaching jobs: Dick Harter at Charlotte, Ron Rothstein at Miami and Dick Versace at Indiana. . . . When a reporter pressed Doug Collins to be critical of Michael Jordan for taking only eight shots in Game 5, the Chicago coach broke up laughing and said: “You expect me to do that? This guy must think I just fell off the back of a turnip truck.”