Byline: Rick Morrissey
CHICAGO _ Whatever victory smells like, the Detroit Pistons smelled it in the fourth quarter Thursday night. And the Bulls? Well, they seemed to be holding their noses.
That might seem unduly harsh after the Bulls charged back from a 3-0 deficit to make a best-of-seven series an actual series. It's not meant to be. It's meant to point out that when it comes to success, the Pistons embrace it, and the Bulls don't know quite what to make of the concept yet.
So this one ended the way it probably should have, with Detroit beating the Bulls, 95-85, and heading for the Eastern Conference finals.
What separates the teams right now, besides talent, is the Pistons' understanding of what it takes to win. They look the part of champions.
"We came up against a team that is experienced and (is) kind of used to this," Bulls forward Luol Deng said.
You can't quantify these things. A scoreboard or a stat sheet doesn't do justice to what Detroit was able to do in the fourth quarter Thursday night.
The Pistons seemed to get everything when it mattered, whether it was rebounds, loose balls or defensive stops. If somebody kept score of, say, free refrigerator magnets, the Pistons would have gotten most of those too.
And the Bulls did a slow, painful fade.
P.J. Brown was called for traveling in the fourth quarter, a very human mistake for a guy who looked incapable of sin in the first half. Deng shot an air ball. Ben Wallace couldn't hit a free throw when it mattered. Fear the Throw.
That's how it was. Call it what you want, but it looked as if the Bulls shied away from all that goes with this big a challenge.
Kirk Hinrich's shot went missing again, and he reverted back to the Hinrich of the first three games, the one who didn't seem to want the ball down the stretch. That can happen when you shoot 3-for-13, as he did Thursday.
It left a team that had few offensive options in the first place with one fewer. Whenever Hinrich drove to the basket in the fourth, the Pistons knew at least one thing: He wasn't going to shoot. And unless Wallace was going to discover some long-lost offensive skills, the Bulls were in trouble.
The P.J. Brown who showed up in the first half looked suspiciously like a go-to guy. His season high this season was 19 points, twice. He had 20 at halftime. This had the possibility of being either very good or very bad for the Bulls. Good, in that anytime someone plays well, it's a positive. Bad, in that if P.J. Brown is your sole means of offensive support, you could be in big trouble.
They were in big trouble in the second half, when Brown didn't score and Detroit outscored the Bulls by 15.
Brown being on pace for 40 points was strange. So was the fact that the referees failed to put about 10 seconds back on the clock in the second quarter after it had run for a while after a whistle. Too bad it didn't matter for the Bulls.
What wasn't strange was Rasheed Wallace's continuing cage match with himself. When he was called for a foul and then traveling in the fourth quarter, there seemed to be a pretty good chance he was going to spontaneously combust right there on the United Center floor. He finally did a few minutes later, getting a technical after some histrionics after a foul on Hinrich.
"Y'all see what was happening," Wallace said afterward. Well, no.
Wallace, who gets angry if a referee even thinks about touching a whistle, is an idiot. But he's an idiot who's advancing to the Eastern Conference finals. And that's really all that matters.
The first half was how it was supposed to be all along. These were two teams so much in each other's faces that there were no secrets about whose pregame meal involved garlic.
It wouldn't be a blowout victory or loss. There wouldn't be a huge lead blown. It was just a playoff basketball game, with all the emotion and tightness of one. That's how it looked to be shaping up.
And then it went away.
Again, too bad. The goal for the Bulls was the conference finals. It was a realistic goal at the start of the season. By the end of it, it was apparent they needed some help.
There is a tomorrow for the Bulls. It just doesn't involve basketball. It involves some questions for general manager John Paxson. Is this team as constituted good enough to advance next year? What is Hinrich, a shooter or a point guard? Do the Bulls need another scorer?
The answers are no, who knows and yes.
There's suddenly a lot of time to address them.
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(c) 2007, Chicago Tribune.
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