Pistons blow out Lakers

By TIM BROWN
LOS ANGELES TIMES
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- In lieu of the coronation plans, of thoughts of Karl Malone's first championship and Phil Jackson's 10th and the organization's fourth in five years, the Los Angeles Lakers stood in their tiny orange locker room on a Thursday night that bled into Friday morning and asked themselves for something more like their old game.
The Detroit Pistons had just shoved them from the floor at The Palace of Auburn Hills, beating them 88-68, and Malone limped away, followed by teammates favoring various swollen parts and psyches.
Wounded mentally and physically
The Pistons got home, forgot about Kobe Bryant's three-pointer, went back to winning possessions and so lead the best-of-seven NBA Finals, two games to one. The Lakers are one desperate shot, that single two-point-one heave, from playing for their lives in Sunday's Game 4 and instead have two full days and most of another to find the energy to get even.
"We're just trying to get one ballgame," said Malone, who staggered through 18 minutes on a torn knee ligament. "And the sooner the better."
As the Lakers mulled their offensive inefficiency in the teeth of the best defense they'd ever seen, as they tried to put Malone back together again in time for him to demand greater effort from them all, Rasheed Wallace stood in the other locker room and observed, "They're human. They bleed just like us."
Only more. So far, lots more.
Hounded for two games by Bryant, Richard Hamilton scored 31 points, 17 in a second half in which the Pistons scored 49 points. Bryant was 4-for-13 from the floor, irritated more than a few teammates by dribbling into double-teams and turned the ball over four times, and the Lakers' 68 points were a playoff low in Los Angeles.
They were not divided in their inexact play, however. Shaquille O'Neal scored 14 points, shot two free throws and took eight rebounds. Gary Payton had six points. The Lakers were outrebounded, outshot at the free-throw line, 30-13, and had three second-chance points to the Pistons' 16.
"At halftime, I told the team, 'I don't think we can play any worse than we played this first half as far as shooting the ball and executing in the open floor,' " Jackson said. "But we tried hard in the second half to duplicate it."
Little effort, low scoring
On their way to those 68 points, the Lakers half-waved at rebounds, half-lunged at loose balls, half-defended the Pistons' jump shooters. Malone is hurt. Derek Fisher and Devean George have sore knees, all of the Laker ligaments fraying at a bad time. And so the Pistons are the better team, and also are playing harder, even in their Game 2 defeat. Among the results, the Lakers scored the third-fewest points in a Finals game in the shot-clock era, and their 32 first-half points came within two of matching the Finals' worst first half in the same era.
"Most of it was effort related," O'Neal said, the Lakers still fighting those demons in mid-June, amazingly.
So the Pistons' backcourt -- Hamilton and Chauncey Billups -- outscores the Lakers', 50-17. So George spends more time lobbying referees than returning to defense. So O'Neal complains afterward of not getting the ball enough, particularly when reminded of one second-quarter stretch in which he pounded Ben Wallace, only to get in foul trouble and get three shots in the second half.
"Yeah," he said of the offense moving away from him. "The story of my life, buddy."
Against the startlingly good Pistons' defense, the Lakers again looked unfamiliar with their offense and unfamiliar with each other, a bad time of year for such things.
By late Thursday night, the Pistons had come a long way from their flight home from Los Angeles when Brown joked he'd "almost committed suicide."
"This is as good as we can play," Brown said.