Brown Can’t Escape the Second-Guessing

To foul or not to foul?

For basketball, it is an eternal question. And for Larry Brown, coach of the Detroit Pistons, there has been an eternal answer over a 32-year coaching career:

No.

The issue came up again Tuesday night in Game 2 of the NBA Finals. With Brown’s Pistons leading the Lakers by three points with 10.5 seconds to go, Karl Malone passed the ball to Shaquille O’Neal, whose often dismal performance at the free-throw line has inspired the Hack-a-Shaq strategy popularized by many.

But no one can ever call Brown a hack. He enabled the Lakers to work the ball over to Kobe Bryant, who also wasn’t fouled. Bryant then made a game-tying three-pointer and the Lakers went on to win in overtime, 99-91, evening the best-of-seven series at a game apiece.

“I was really surprised they didn’t foul Shaq,” said Laker assistant coach Frank Hamblen, an assistant under Brown with the Denver Nuggets in the mid-70s when the club was still in the American Basketball Assn. “I was also surprised they didn’t foul Kobe. We had warned him, ‘They may foul you.’ So he was kind of gearing up, getting his rhythm so if they fouled it would be while he was shooting.

“But Larry has principles, thoughts on how the game should be played. He always said he didn’t do that sort of thing, foul in that situation. He likes to switch defenders, try and get a steal. I don’t know. I think you have to foul in that situation.”

Until that point, the Lakers were poised to fall into a hole from which no NBA finalist has emerged victorious. No team has lost the first two games of the best-of-seven Finals at home and come back to win the championship. And with the current format, which includes three home games in a row for the team that starts on the road, a comeback from 0-2 seemed all the more unlikely.

But there the Lakers were, looking at a six-point deficit with less than a minute to play. When Detroit’s Richard Hamilton missed a jumper from the right side, teammate Ben Wallace slid in between O’Neal, Malone and Luke Walton to grab the rebound and put the ball back in, giving the Pistons an 89-83 lead -- their biggest advantage of the night -- with 47.8 seconds remaining.

Bryant, who had already missed a trio of three-pointers, responded by firing up yet another. Underneath the basket, O’Neal and Rasheed Wallace waited for the rebound should Bryant miss.

And he did. The ball came up short, hitting the front of the rim and taking . the most critical bounce of the season. Rasheed Wallace was in position at the front of the basket to grab the ball, O’Neal behind him. But the ball, coming off the front part of the rim, soared over Wallace’s head into the arms of O’Neal.

The Laker center softly caromed the ball off the glass and back into the hoop, and was fouled by Wallace as he did so.

O’Neal made the free throw. Score: 89-86. Time remaining: 35.9 seconds.

After a timeout, Detroit attempted to increase its lead on a running jumper by Chauncey Billups.

He missed and O’Neal got the rebound. Time remaining: 16.9 seconds.

O’Neal flipped the ball to Bryant, who glanced back at his coach, looking for direction, as he dribbled up the court.

“Do you call timeout or do you not call timeout?” Hamblen said. “If you call a timeout, they can set up their defense and they can make that decision on the foul.”

Jackson decided to use his last timeout, meaning the three-point attempt was the only option.

When O’Neal received the in-bounds pass, he bounced the ball to Walton, who dribbled to the right side where Bryant, with defender Tayshaun Prince breathing down his back, came up to get the ball.

Time remaining: 7.6 seconds.

Bryant dribbled to the top of the key behind the three-point line, with Hamilton having picked him up coming out of a screen set by Walton. By then, Jackson was no longer worried about his player being fouled.

“Kobe’s too quick,” the coach said. “He had an opportunity with the basketball to convert a three-point play into a four-point play. I’ve fallen prey to that a couple of times in my coaching career where you go out there thinking you are going to find a way to foul somebody and it ends up being a four-point play.”

So now it was down to two high-school rivals from Philadelphia. Bryant, from Lower Merion, versus Hamilton from Coatesville.

Bryant took a dribble a few feet left of center and two feet back of the three-point line as the time dipped below four seconds. And there were other numbers to cause a Laker fan concern: Bryant was not only 0 for 4 from three-point range in the game but was four for 28 in the postseason, his 14% success rate the worst in the league for anybody with 10 or more attempts.

“He’s either struggling or due,” ABC commentator Doc Rivers said. Bryant was due.

With Hamilton failing to get in his old rival’s face for fear of a foul, Bryant launched his shot with 3.7 seconds remaining.

Swish.

Detroit had one more chance to win in regulation, with 2.1 seconds remaining, but Rasheed Wallace fumbled the in-bounds pass from Prince.

And the Pistons weren’t heard from again.

To foul or not to foul? In the minds of the Lakers, Brown’s answer was a surprise.