Porter Slips Into Background : Trail Blazers: Point guard who starred during victories over Spurs and Suns isn’t shooting very often in this series. And Portland’s bench isn’t doing much, either.

Terry Porter’s game is falling back to earth, and wafting alongside are the Trail Blazers.

You can stick a fork in Blazermania.

The Portland Blazers, down three games to one to the Detroit Pistons in the NBA finals, look to their point guard for guidance.

They want Terry Porter to shoot more. But they won’t give him the ball.

Porter rose to new heights in series victories over San Antonio and Phoenix, but has fallen silent. He was on the losing end of several big plays in the final minutes of Tuesday night’s 112-109 loss to the Pistons.

Worse, he took only 10 shots and scored only 17 points.

Where has his offense gone?

“I don’t know,” said Trail Blazer Coach Rick Adelman. “I really don’t know. But I do know we need him to score and to look to score for us to win.

“One thing I was really concerned with at halftime was he had played 21 minutes and had taken only three shots. We can’t win with him taking three shots at halftime. Why’d it happen? Usually he’d make the pass and it’d never come back to him.”

Maybe Porter should take over, like Isiah Thomas, Magic Johnson, Kevin Johnson and the acknowledged big guys of the point guard position do.

“If it was on me to do that . . . “ Porter said. “We have Clyde (Drexler).

“I got a lot more wide-open shots in the other series. It’s really hard to say why. A lot of them were on semi-breaks and kickouts. I haven’t really gotten the ball this series.”

Late in the game, Porter did start stepping up, but that didn’t work so well, either. There was a key traveling call; a missed short jumper on a fast break; then a drive in the closing seconds with his team down 108-107 on which he ran into Joe Dumars, thought he was fouled, didn’t get the call, and lost the ball.

And that’s what one of the franchise’s rising stars did. how about the youngsters on the bench?

Cliff Robinson, the shot-happy forward; Danny Young, the alleged deadeye guard; Drazen Petrovic, the bewildered Yugoslav; and Wayne Cooper, the journeyman center, were outscored, 26-8, and out-rebounded, 12-5.

The backup Pistons made 12 of 23 shots. The reserve Trail Blazers were four for 12, with three turnovers and nine personal fouls.

The Piston reserves’ superiority enabled Chuck Daly to use them for 81 minutes, compared to the 47 that Adelman suffered with his.

Adelman actually let four of his subs play together at the start of the second period. That was when the Pistons started the run that took them from 32-22 behind to 51-46 ahead at half.

“I think Vinnie Johnson and (John) Salley and Mark (Aguirre), they have been in the league, like 10 years,” Petrovic said.

Actually, it’s 24. Robinson and Petrovic are rookies. Cooper looks as if he’s played a year too long.

Playing with the first team in a pressing defense, Robinson came back to score eight points--the bench’s total--in the second half.

“Their guys have been around the league for a while,” Robinson said. “They know their game. They know what they’re capable of doing.

“What I was doing in the second half, I should have been doing in the first half.

“The first half, I was coming off the pick open and I was pressing my shot a little. I was aiming it.”

You pay for your experience in this league, and the price the Pistons have exacted is their lead in this series. No team has come back from such a deficit in the NBA finals.

“We’re just going to have to make history,” Porter said.

Not unless they make some changes, first.