NBA PLAYOFFS : Bulls Erase the Last Doubt : Eastern Conference finals: Bulls extinguish Piston hopes for a third consecutive title, 115-94, and make their first trip to the championship series.

Desperate to make a final stand on home turf, the Detroit Pistons chose their weapons. Forearms at 94 feet.

What else remained in the arsenal?

Turns out even that most reliable of side arms was empty from overuse. The Pistons had to stand and take it from the Chicago Bulls: a four-game sweep in the Eastern Conference finals capped by a 115-94 loss at home. Hopes of becoming the first team to win three NBA titles in a row since the mid-1960s were gone.

These were the same Pistons who had eliminated the Bulls from the playoffs in each of the previous three years, the last two in the same conference finals. So not only did the Bulls reach the NBA finals for the first time in their 25-year history, they knocked down the door instead of walking through.

The Pistons stayed with the script to the end, Dennis Rodman giving an uncalled for shove to the back of an airborne Scottie Pippen in the second quarter. But the Pistons were left with little in the way of true ability at the end. A team long on bravado went away quietly.

The crowd didn’t remain silent. With two minutes to play, by which time about half of the 21,454 had left, those remaining abandoned conference loyalty and history to chant, “Go, L.A.!, Go, L.A.!” in preparation for the impending matchup.

“It was quite a switch,” Chicago Coach Phil Jackson said. “I was disappointed that the Detroit fans would do that.”

Emotions were running high all over. Piston Coach Chuck Daly, a loser in the conference finals for the first time since 1988, brushed away tears on the bench. Detroit players already on the sidelines in the fourth quarter greeted their teammates leaving the game with hugs and high fives. When the Pistons officially were through, finishing these playoffs at 7-8 after going 30-7 the previous two years, General Manager Jack McCloskey cried and embraced each player entering the tunnel leading to the locker room.

Such scenes stand out because there wasn’t much of a game. The Bulls, improving to 11-1 in the playoffs and holding an opponent to fewer than 100 points for the ninth time, broke away late in the first quarter. A brief run turned a 24-24 score into a 38-28 lead 1:27 into the second quarter.

It was 42-34 when Pippen, who finished with 23 points, 10 assists and six rebounds, drove to the basket and was hit by Bill Laimbeer in what was ruled a flagrant foul. As Pippen came down, he was pushed in the back by Rodman and flew into the first row of seats.

Pippen was slow in getting up, but Rodman, recently voted the league’s defensive player of the year for the second consecutive season, was not called for any sort of foul.

Jim Cleamons, a Chicago assistant coach, had a brief shouting match with approving fans behind the bench.

“I don’t think Detroit was anything but frustrated this game,” Jackson said, “and they took it out on our players.”

It turned into an indirect three-point play when Pippen made one free throw and Cliff Levingston slammed in a Chicago miss after the Bulls retained possession on the flagrant foul. That gave Chicago a 45-34 lead en route to a 57-50 halftime advantage.

That’s about where the Pistons got off. The Bulls opened the third quarter with an 11-4 run. The lead became 83-64 and reached 25 points on two occasions in the fourth quarter. The new champion was in place long before the end of the game.

“We just didn’t have anything,” Detroit’s Isiah Thomas said. “You could tell because we got beat to every loose ball and rebound. All the things you need to win a ballgame, we lost. The mind says, ‘Go,’ but the body said, ‘I can’t do it.’

“They beat us in every phase of the game. They are better. That’s the bottom line.”

The Bulls acknowledged surprise at sweeping Detroit, but they spent as much time priming for the immediate future as contemplating the past. The combination of both made for a pleasant exit from an arena in which they had known almost nothing but defeat.

“It’s a real nice feeling,” said guard John Paxson, who scored all 12 of his points in the first quarter. “This has been that hurdle we had to get over. This is one of those situations where you won’t know how you feel until a little later. But we know there are still games to win.”

Meanwhile, the stereo blared on and the players joked in the losers’ locker room.

“If we didn’t accomplish everything we accomplished, this would be a sad story,” Thomas said. “This is not a sad story.”

Merely a new chapter.

Eastern Conference Notes

The Bulls will have home-court advantage over the Lakers, but will open on the road if Portland comes back to win the West. If the Lakers win tonight, the finals will begin Friday night at Chicago Stadium. . . . The Bulls’ Michael Jordan led all scorers with 29 points and had eight rebounds and eight assists. Isiah Thomas led the Pistons with 16 points. . . . In an attempt to generate more offense, Piston Coach Chuck Daly replaced defensive-minded Dennis Rodman with Mark Aguirre in the starting lineup. Aguirre, who averaged 19.3 points the first three games of the series, got only nine Monday, three more than Rodman.