Pistons Get Bad, Get Even

If it ain’t rough, it ain’t right.

The Detroit Pistons’ mantra has served them well, their belief being that they don’t perform at their best until after they’ve put themselves in a position to fail.

Thursday night, though, they carried it to a ridiculous extreme.

In a game they had to win, Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals after losing the series opener to the Miami Heat two nights earlier, they squandered all but two points of an 18-point second-half lead and nearly collapsed at the end, giving up 17 points to the frenetic Heat over the last 1 minute 46 seconds.

“Is that what we did?” Heat Coach Pat Riley asked later.

The Pistons finally won, 92-88, but only after Chauncey Billups made two free throws with 8.7 seconds to play and, at the other end, Lindsey Hunter stripped Dwyane Wade as the All-Star guard pulled up for a three-point shot.

Hunter retrieved the ball and spiked it at the final horn.

“I was like, ‘Man, let’s get on to the next game,’ ” Hunter said. “We’ve got to do a better job of closing out games ... and concentrate on what we have to do.”

Until the final minute, all had seemed well with the Pistons, who bounced back strongly from Tuesday’s loss. In a reversal from Game 1, when they fell into an 11-0 hole and led only briefly, they never trailed after the first 3 1/2 minutes, led by 14 points in the first quarter and built their advantage to 66-48 late in the third.

Tayshaun Prince matched his playoff career high with 24 points, 10 in the fourth quarter, and also took 11 rebounds. Richard Hamilton scored 22 points, all but two in the first half, and Billups scored 18, all in the second half. Rasheed Wallace scored 16 points and even defensive ace Ben Wallace pitched in offensively, making all four of his shots and scoring nine points to go with 12 rebounds.

They held the Heat to 42.5% shooting.

Only the end was sloppy.

“What happens so many times, you get near the end of the game, you start playing not to lose instead of playing to win,” Coach Flip Saunders said. “You don’t make concentrated decisions and you ... wait for that clock to keep on rolling.”

Wade, who made 11 of 20 shots but also had nine turnovers, scored 10 of his game-high 32 points in the fourth quarter, the last on a turnaround three-point shot from the left corner that made the score 90-88 with 10 seconds left.

Moments earlier, the Pistons were called for a five-second violation after Prince was unable to inbound the ball after a layup by the Heat’s Antoine Walker.

“The only thing that you can take from it is, we’ve got to have that same aggressiveness,” Wade said of the Heat’s finishing push. “We’ve got to have that same want throughout the game. You can’t dig yourself into a hole.”

Shaquille O’Neal had 21 points and 12 rebounds for the Heat, which didn’t get the same production from its role players as it had in Game 1.

Walker scored 11 points but missed nine of 12 shots. Nobody else scored more than seven for the Heat.

“We need four or five guys to play well and score and contribute,” Riley said. “We didn’t get that tonight.”

Said O’Neal, who made nine of 16 shots: “We were just playing silly most of the game and then got serious with, like, four minutes to go.”

It was almost enough.