NBA PLAYOFFS : A Happy Ending Likely, if You’re Among Giants

“Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum!

“I smell the blood of an Englishman;

“Be he alive or be he dead,

“I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”

--Jack and the Beanstalk

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The fairy tale of little Jack climbing his beanstalk to foil the mean old giant is just that--a fairy tale. Only in nursery rhymes does the little guy win.

In the real world of the NBA, for example, reality has set in. Order has been restored. The giants have smelled the blood and are grinding the bones.

No sport is a one-man sport. But basketball comes the closest. The game belongs to that guy in the high post waving his arms for the ball and turning in on the small fry to drop in the two-foot baskets by the dozen.

No beanstalks are cut here for the giants to fall to their deaths. It’s the point guards who fall by the wayside.

There’s an axiom in boxing that “a good big man will always beat a good little man.” And nowhere is this more true than in basketball.

Consider the four teams left in the elimination for the professional championship of the world. What do they all have in common? A shooting guard? A small forward?

Naw, they all have the ever-lovin’ Big-Man-In-The-Pivot. Take a look: The Orlando Magic has Fee, otherwise known as Shaquille O’Neal. The Houston Rockets have Fi, alias Hakeem (The Dream) Olajuwon. The San Antonio Spurs have Fo, the admirable admiral, David Robinson. The Indiana Pacers have Fum, the Dunking Dutchman, Rik Smits.

They almost all got to the final four by eliminating teams that did not have the big pivotal man. I say “almost” because the Pacers eliminated the team that had Patrick Ewing, whom I would consider the real “Fum” in the foursome. But he was playing almost in a cast from hamstring and calf muscle pulls and was (barely) eliminated by Smits’ Pacers.

But all of the Fearsome Foursome are 7-footers-plus. All are scorers, all are dominating presences on defense. It is like having a man-and-a-half in the lineup, their dominance is so evident.

The Rockets burst through the Utah Jazz, which has The Mailman, Karl Malone, at forward. But, in this league, you need the Postmaster General to prevail. Then, the Rockets downed the Phoenix Suns, who have Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson but no one to keep order in the center.

The Spurs downed the gutty little Lakers, who, again, had no Abdul-Jabbar or Chamberlain to clog up the middle and throw in sky hooks for them.

Orlando and Shaquille even took care of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, who had no commanding presence in the key.

The Pacers demand a bit more explaining because it is the notion here that a healthy Ewing would be more than a match for Smits. But Smits climbs no beanstalks. He goes 7-4, 265.

So, the bigger they are, the harder they are to play.

Sometimes, in recent years, the belief got shaken. The formula seemed not to be working. This was a sport that had historically been dominated by the big intimidating presence. Bill Russell almost contemptuously took the ball away from the rest of the league in his glory years of annual championships. You will remember the Lakers of that era had Elgin Baylor and Jerry West. But centers Darrell Imhoff, Ray Felix, Leroy Ellis and Jim Krebs were no matches for the Emperor Russell.

A few years ago, an upstart named Isiah Thomas led a Piston team to a couple of NBA titles with a lineup that had only a Bill Laimbeer and James Edwards for a pivot.

Then, a shooting guard named Jordan led a Bull team that had only a Bill Cartwright in the middle to championships.

It shook up the Big-Man Theory. Had the game changed? Had it become, for heaven’s sake, a team game?

Forget it. Oh, you might get a Thomas or a Jordan or even a Larry Bird, but if I were drafting next week, I’d go for a Fee, Fi, Fo or Fum. A Shaq, an Admiral, a Dream or a Dutch Boy. All they need is a caddy to go get them the ball. The bigger they are, the higher they score.