It’s Only Fitting That Rose Was Fab in Game 5

You can’t fake street knowledge. Too hard. You’ll get called on it and put in check. Quickly.

Jalen Rose won’t get caught. He is authentic. True to the game.

He’s perfect for the good-guy Indiana Pacers. Because sometimes there’s a need to treat an NBA finals game in the palatial Staples Center as if it’s just another summer day in the gym at St. Cecilia.

Teams need an edge. That’s where Rose comes in.

“He brings one of these bad boy images to the game,” Pacer Sam Perkins said. “I think he would like to be that. But he’s definitely totally different from Reggie [Miller], in a sense. They’re two different individuals.”

Miller tries to be antagonistic; he did entitle his autobiography “I Love Being the Enemy.” But Perkins calls him “a good boy in a bad boy’s body.”

For Rose, it just happens naturally.

“No doubt,” Perkins said. “No dooouuubt. The man’s from Detroit. Motor City. And Reggie’s from Riverside.”

Being from Detroit also meant that Rose’s basketball influences included the “Bad Boy” Pistons, who won NBA championships in 1989 and 1990 in rough-and-tumble fashion.

Even when they went out, they did it with attitude. Rose recalled when the Pistons snubbed the victorious Chicago Bulls and walked off the court without shaking their hands, “One of the best days of my life.”

Of course, being from Michigan meant Rose looked up to Magic Johnson.

“He was a very charismatic person, he was an intelligent guy as well as being a great player,” Rose said.

“He was an interesting dynamic being that he was a 6-9 point guard with so much effectiveness as far as leading his team, as far as passing the ball, things of that nature. If you look back in history, he’s still been one of a kind.”

Rose tried to make it two, developing a love for the point guard position.

“It was strictly because of him,” Rose said. “I think if he was a small forward, then I would want to be a small forward.”

And there’s a lot of Johnson’s crossover-appealing personality in Rose.

Rose is actually just as adept at playing corporate as he is at playing street. He’s a smart guy, a fun guy, a polite guy.

He can go along with the game, he just doesn’t prefer to do it that way.

At the onset of the NBA finals he was asked what he didn’t like about the entire overly hyped scene.

“The most difficult part, to be honest, is the microanalysis,” he said. “Everything is broken down to the last compound. You talk about every player, his strengths and weaknesses from top to bottom. Being a player, I just want to go out and play the game.”

Rose is responsible and accountable, to himself, his family and his teammates. He knows just how far to take it. You don’t see him getting kicked out of games or drawing suspensions. He doesn’t play dirty, he just plays all-out, and in your face.

Rose replaced Chris Mullin in the starting lineup this season, then surpassed Miller as the team’s leading scorer in the regular season. He poses all kinds of matchup problems because he is 6 feet 8, can handle the ball, post up and shoot from three-point range.

He wasn’t about to let his season end on a sour note Friday night. He didn’t want the Pacers to go out like that either.

He has talked with confidence throughout the series, and he backed it up in Game 5. Rose scored 32 points on 12-for-18 shooting, Miller made seven of 12 shots and scored 25 points and the Pacers pounded the Lakers, 120-87, to send the series back to Los Angeles for Game 6.

Rose’s purpose was obvious throughout the night. He had that little snarl he wears before tip-off. He remained defiant through the end of the game, when he glared at Derek Fisher as he dribbled the remaining seconds off the clock.

Attitude.

“He’s always been that way, because of his confidence,” said Juwan Howard, Rose’s teammate at Michigan. “He feels like he can play with anybody.”

Said Rose: “I’m just being who I am. Obviously, we’ve got an interesting mix on this team. We’ve got guys that haven’t been in college, and we’ve got guys that have been out of college so long that they don’t remember when they were in college. Me and Travis Best are like the medium ground. I was a guy, when I played in college the younger guys pretty much looked up to what I did as a player and the older guys knew who I was.

“It’s just a matter of me going out, being who I am, having a good rapport with my teammates and doing the best I can.”

Rose will always be associated with the Fab Five, that headstrong group of freshmen at Michigan who trash-talked their way to the NCAA championship game, then made a return trip as sophomores just to show it was no fluke.

Rose, Howard, Chris Webber, Ray Jackson and Jimmy King were always known for their style as much as their success, with their baggy shorts and black socks. Rose was the type of guy to roll into a news conference at the Final Four with his cap tilted off to the side, look over at Coach Steve Fisher and say, “Whassup, Coach?”

Now Rose is representing the Fab Five in the NBA finals.

“No doubt,” Howard said. “But more importantly, he’s representing himself and his family.

“But the Fab Five is family. It’s family.”

What made the Fab Five so popular is the way they played without regard to form or convention.

And there’s still a lot of Fab Five in his game.

“Of course it is,” Rose said. “That’s the only way I know how to play.”

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.