Pistons Have Look of the Champions They Nearly Are

The Lakers vs. the Detroit Pistons is one sporting spectacle that makes me glad I don’t own a giant-screen television, where faces are the actual size of the carvings on Mt. Rushmore.

I like drama, but I don’t want to get that up-close and personal with such wrenching scenes of pain and suffering. I’m not talking about the Lakers with their physical and emotional traumas. I’m referring to the Detroit Pistons and their horrified reactions to every foul and infraction whistled against them.

In fact, the only thing that can derail the Pistons would be if a key player pulls a major facial muscle after a foul call.

LOS ANGELES (API) -- Piston center Bill Laimbeer will miss the rest of the NBA Finals after suffering a strained trombonis spumoni , the muscle that connects the jawbone to the brain stem. Laimbeer was injured executing a violent jaw-drop when he was called for an elbowing foul during the national anthem before Game 4.

Asked to comment, Laimbeer said, “Sorry, the doctor warned me not to move my jaAAAAAAAWWWWWWWGGGGHHH!!”

This is not to say that the Pistons invented crying. Red Auerbach invented it 70 years ago and it caught on faster than the one-handed jump shot. Magic Johnson is a master of foul-reaction disaster; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s indignant arm-flap is a much-admired classic.

The Pistons, however, have elevated the foul-take to an art form. It’s part of the Piston package, which is a blend of boyish charm, eccentricity, enthusiasm, exuberance and wanton violence.

I’m impressed with the way the Pistons have taken advantage of the new super-close-up camera shots to convey their sense of injustice. Actor friends tell me that many professional acting workshops make use of Piston game videotapes.

“See that look, students? That’s what I mean when I ask for pathos blended with irony and despair! Incredible! And that’s the Piston ballboy!!”

Laimbeer’s speciality is the shock take. It is an expression that says: “Say what , Your Honor? You’re sentencing me to be dipped alive in boiling gerbil saliva for a parking ticket ???!!!”

Dennis Rodman and Rick Mahorn have perfected the difficult and annoying “radiant smile reaction.” It is the expression most commonly seen on the face of a Miss Universe pageant winner, Stevie Wonder, or a guy walking barefoot on really pointy rocks.

Along with the looks, the Piston players hop and saunter about the court, hands on hips, waiting for the governor to call. Rodman locks his hands behind his head as if he were being arrested for overacting. All this pacing and spinning and lurching would make it difficult for TV to zero in on the player faces, except that CBS has assigned 37 hand-held mini-cams to shoot nothing but facial close-ups after foul calls.

Although entertaining, these close-up shots present an element of danger. Remember, our children are watching. Just yesterday I accused my 5-year-old son of playing with his Leggo blocks when he was supposed to be getting dressed for preschool, and he nailed me with a Bill Laimbeer jaw-drop.

Actually there is a good reason for the Pistons’ agony and ecstasy.

“It’s all for Chuck,” John Salley explained recently, referring to Piston Coach Chuck Daly. “Everything’s for Chuck. You’ve got to make Chuck think you’ve been cheated. If you (give a so-what shrug), he’ll think you don’t care.”

What the players don’t realize is that Daly is so busy with his own shock-takes that he hardly has time to notice theirs. Daly is a triple-threat coach, equally adept at overreacting to referee miscalls, non-calls and his own players’ bonehead plays.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Daly and his Pistons.

How can you not enjoy Rodman, the Human Chandelier, who has invented an acrobatic version of the slam-dunk. Rodman dunks, then grabs onto the rim and dangles for a minute or two, lest the official scorer credit the basket to the wrong Piston.

I certainly hope the Lakers don’t resort to secretly smearing Super Glue on the Piston rim before Game 4, thus causing Rodman to hang aloft for an entire half, because that would be wrong.

Salley is a funny man, off the court anyway. He has a marvelous sense of humor, and a penchant for innocently dropping the names of his famed Hollywood buddies, such as Eddie (Murphy), Spike (Lee) and Arsenio (Schmidlap) Hall.

You have to love Joe Dumars, who reported late for training camp and missed the Pistons’ acting lessons. On a team of alleged thugs and hotdogs, Dumars plays cleanly and quietly, like a kid trying to earn a merit badge in jump-shooting.

And how about the amazing Vinnie Johnson, who is nicknamed Microwave, not because he heats up quickly like a microwave oven, but because he is built like one.

The only time Vinnie has been shut out during this series was after Game 2, at the team’s postgame locker-room buffet. James (Buddha) Edwards hit the table first and was sitting at his locker. Between his feet was a paper plate with a pile of chicken-wing bones about two feet high.

Microwave looked at the empty chicken bin, then looked at Edwards and his bone pile.

“Buddha ate all the wings,” Microwave said in dismay.

Buddha, maintaining his serene character, went right on gnawing on the last wing.

I had to dash off to make deadline, but I really wanted to hang around and see Bill Laimbeer’s reaction.