‘JV’ Team Has Been Taking It to the Big Guys

On the Lakers’ first night in their suburban Detroit hotel, a few damp souls stood in a nearby parking structure and vented their long-held emotions about the visiting team, a drunken chorus that eventually got them nudged along by the local police.

Thing is, most of the Lakers, having gone to dinner or a movie on a rainy night, missed it entirely.

“They were chanting,” one team official noted, “at an empty building.”

Two days later, a Game 3 loss piled upon a split in Los Angeles, the Lakers carried on, perhaps undaunted by growing suspicions of their vulnerability, but beginning to hear the sounds of the inevitable.

The younger, suddenly more dashing Detroit Pistons lead the best-of-seven NBA Finals, two games to one. Game 4 is Sunday night at the Palace, where the Lakers lost Thursday night by 20 points, where Shaquille O’Neal played the most ineffective Finals game of his career and Kobe Bryant was worse.

A week ago, the Lakers answered questions about sweeping the unimpressive Pistons. Now they hope they’ll have a game to play when they return to Los Angeles next week.

In three games played over five days, the Pistons have shot 35 more free throws and taken 21 more rebounds. Bryant hasn’t figured a way over or around Tayshaun Prince, and O’Neal, despite two very sound medial-collateral ligaments, has two more rebounds than Karl Malone.

In the meantime, it is difficult to say if the Lakers’ Original Two are playing with their teammates or around them.

Only Luke Walton has been particularly helpful, and that was over a mere two quarters of Game 2. In the regular season, Malone would be on crutches and Derek Fisher and Devean George might be resting their sore parts, but the Pistons have hardly noticed. Suddenly, it’s about them.

“All year long,” Piston guard Chauncey Billups said, “they called us the junior varsity conference.

“We traveled a tough path to get to the Finals and we worked very hard, just like the Lakers did to get here and [that] nobody, nobody, gave us a chance was disrespectful.”

They are taking that out on the Lakers, who through three games have one shot -- Bryant’s three-pointer -- and one period -- overtime, Game 2 -- to show for their trip to the Finals, leading Fisher to conclude, “It seems that their desire to be ... champions is greater than ours at this point.”

Phil Jackson looked back over three games, many of the possessions spent failing to find O’Neal in the low post, many of them spent a half-stride slow, many of them spent in poor or panicky decisions forced by the Pistons’ defense, and drew his own conclusion: The referees are the problem.

While granting the Pistons have been the aggressors, Jackson said the referees have granted them that license, the familiar call of the coach of the outworked team.

“I talked about the Pistons playing their type of game,” Jackson said, “and we’ve allowed this to happen for three games consistently and without enforcing our will upon the games.

“We have to make the stand and, you know, in the process, I’m going to have to make a stand with officials.... If we want to play defense, we have to be able to play it the way they are playing defense, in the bodies, up against arms, contesting shots, and not getting called for the foul. If we attempt to play this type of defense, it’s ridiculous ... the disparity in this. And they are the people that are putting bodies against bodies.”

Jackson is unhappy with the Lakers’ defense against Billups, a responsibility that falls to Gary Payton and, lately, to Bryant.

“We’ve made an All-Star out of Chauncey Billups so far,” he said. “I don’t know if he’s ever been an All-Star or not before. I don’t think so.”

Billups has averaged 22.7 points in the series. Bryant has averaged 23. Billups has 27 fewer shots, twice as many free throws, and is shooting a better percentage than Bryant, which led Jackson to his next point.

“We never thought that Tayshaun Prince was notably a defensive stopper,” Jackson said. “But all of a sudden, he is, and his reputation, obviously, has been established because he’s on top of Kobe playing him very, very well.”

Prince’s defense on Bryant, and his teammates’ help on Bryant, has helped stall the Laker offense, which at times becomes too reliant on Bryant, like it or not. O’Neal is making noise as though he wants the ball, and he’d be interested to know that Bryant said, “We’re not worried about getting him more touches. We’re worried about winning the game and getting everybody better looks.”

Well, O’Neal is sure his touches mean more open shots for everyone else and, therefore, more wins, particularly in the Finals, where he has almost always dominated.

He was asked Friday if, at 32, he were still capable of those flashy games.

“Of course I’m getting older, but I’m not slow and weak,” O’Neal said. “In order for me to be me, I have to continue to do the things that I’m doing. I’m still shooting 60% from the line. I can still cause people to send three or four guys. I can still cause defenders to flop and beg for the call. Of course I’m slower and weaker, but I’m still me. I’m still Diesel and I look better than you, so it doesn’t matter.”

Then, he said, there’d be one more thing.

“We have to,” he said, “you know, just, you know, act like we want it.”