Worthy Cool, Calm, Can’t Collect

Every basketball player has a free-throw ritual that is as set and ingrained and solemn as a religious ceremony. Sometimes the ritual actually involves prayer.

It also involves breathing, and sighting, and caressing the ball, and zeroing in on the front of the rim.

With two seconds remaining in Thursday night’s Game 2 of the NBA Finals, James Worthy goes to the line to shoot two free throws.

The Lakers trail the Pistons by two points. Worthy can send the game into overtime and give the Lakers a chance for the upset of the month, at least. He can keep alive a limping, struggling, semi-desperate team.

If the Lakers could select a man to be at the line with two seconds left and the game on the line, they would choose Magic Johnson, but Johnson is in the locker room, cursing his fate and nursing his left hamstring.

If not Magic, though, James Worthy is the man they want standing at the line. He is a 78% free-throw shooter, which is good but not remarkable.

But in pressure situations, he has a temperament like a lifeguard at Club Med. Big Game James.

Throughout the playoffs, until the Finals, he has been the team’s Mr. Clutch. In all the playoff action that led up to the Finals, other than Michael Jordan, the NBA’s outstanding player was James Worthy.

He was playing the ball of his life for the team of the ‘80s.

He has struggled against the Pistons and their excellent and physical defense. In this game, he was 7 for 19 from the field, 4 for 6 from the line.

Still, this is the man you want on the line. Worthy once talked of aspiring, after his career, to become a mortician. Another time, he said he might like to be a long-haul trucker. He is a man who seeks and finds calm, even on a basketball court filled with slashing elbows and crowbar arms.

The previous day, Piston forward John Salley had marveled at Worthy’s stoicism on the court. “James doesn’t ever say anything,” Salley said. “Never. He doesn’t even talk to the refs. He doesn’t change his expression. Does he talk? No. Never.”

Jerry West has said of Worthy, “No player does less to call attention to himself.”

But now he’s got all the attention he needs. Twenty-one thousand fans, screaming, the ones behind the Laker basket waving signs and placards that say, “CHOKE” and “BRICK.”

They wave the signs and scream and slobber and yell like shipwreck victims calling out desperately to a passing tramp steamer. It may be some new form of aerobics or primal therapy. Very few players even notice.

Worthy steps to the line and begins his ritual.

Bends over, takes a few bounces. Stands up straight, arms hanging, ball held around his knees.

Studies the rim. Puffs out his cheeks and heaves a large sigh, as if expelling the demons of failure. He looks a little nervous, but he always looks a little nervous, even when he’s shaking and faking out on the wings, preparing to bury an eagle-swoop finger-roll over four opponents.

It’s more a look of heightened alertness. How’s that for Hollywood psychobabble?

He takes a little jerky dip of the knees and springs up slightly, quickly, releasing high and following through.

“A very nice stroke,” Laker assistant Bill Bertka calls it.

This time the ball drops inches short, hits the front of the rim, bounces up, hits the front of the rim again and dribbles off to the left.

The Lakers lose.

In an odd bit of strategy, he hits the second free throw instead of clanging it and praying for a Laker rebound, but that is strictly a desperation move once he has blown the chance to tie.

“I went through my ritual,” Worthy says afterwards. “It just rolled off the rim.”

True to his personality, Worthy does not bare his soul in postgame interviews. He looks you in the eye and calmly answers your questions, win or lose.

“I’ve been in that situation before,” he says evenly, “it (the pressure, the screaming fans) wasn’t a big factor. I just concentrated and missed.”

Mark Aguirre of the Pistons had a typical reaction.

“Shock,” Aguirre says. “Total shock. Shock.”

“I was very surprised,” says John Salley. “It doesn’t seem like he would do that. Better him than me.”

Isiah Thomas: “I was like: ‘Yeah!’ I was happy.”

And Rick Mahorn said the missed Worthy free throw “felt good. When a pressure situation’s on you, it’s heavy.”

But Worthy is an unlikely candidate for choking. He epitomizes Laker coolness under fire, the weapon that carried them to an unbelievable height coming into this series.

This time he missed.

Magic Johnson kissed Aguirre and Thomas before the game again, but again the Lakers failed to get to first base.

Now the pressure is really on.

Worthy faces the press, cooly, then takes his soft drink and boards the team bus inside the Palace. He talks to a couple of teammates, then takes his seat.