Detroit Cranking Out a Big Winner

CHICAGO —  Bill Laimbeer looked at his interrogator with the condescending expression he usually sports during interviews. The question: Was he worried.

“About what?” he asked.

About whether his Detroit Pistons might tail off at some point.

“That’s a stupid question.”

Well, isn’t it possible that Detroit, which has gone 25-2 since Jan. 23, which already has a playoff spot clinched, which has the best record in the league at 51-16, might at some point go flat? Might lose again?

“Next question,” Laimbeer said. “We’ve got enough guys on our team that we don’t have flat games.”

The fact is, the Pistons really don’t seem to have flat games. And what’s strange about it is no one in the league acts surprised anymore. Detroit routinely gave a good Chicago Bulls team a 25-point shellacking at home. Well, what can you do? They’re the Pistons.

“Detroit plays with a lot of confidence against us,” Michael Jordan said the other day. “Because they know that they may have certain stronger points than we have, and they know they can go to them at any time and win the game.”

The Pistons have guards Joe Dumars and Isiah Thomas, forward James Edwards and Laimbeer, not to mention a strong corps of reserves. All signs strongly point to the Pistons returning to the NBA finals in June.

Detroit’s recent run has been remarkable, an eight-week stretch in which they’ve stormed to the league’s best record. Before Thursday night’s 115-110 loss in Houston, they’d won 12 straight, one short of the string they ripped off before losing in Atlanta Feb. 23. During the second run the Pistons beat Chicago (twice), Phoenix, San Antonio, New York, Utah, Atlanta and Philadelphia. That’s a good chunk of the contenders list.

Six more victories would have put the Pistons in select company. Four teams (the Rochester Royals, Philadelphia Warriors, New York Knicks and Boston Celtics) won 18 straight, and the Milwaukee Bucks and old Washington Capitols won 20 in a row. The all-time record is the Lakers’ 33 straight from November 1971 to January 1972.

But the streak wasn’t the thing. It’s the way Detroit is taking good teams apart, at every venue.

For motivation, there’s the repeat notion. The Pistons are ahead of their pace of last season, when they went 63-19 and lost only two of 17 playoff games. It also helps that Los Angeles is on their heels for the best record in the league.

But, often the Pistons have forgotten about the opponent and figuratively played against themselves.

“Sometimes it’s good to do that,” said Dumars. “Sometimes it’s not. With this team here you just have to play good basketball. But if you get caught up in that (playing against the game), you can get in trouble. We just concentrate on what we have to do.”

Lakers Coach Pat Riley often uses the book “The Art of War” to explain the mindset of his team during the past decade. The Pistons make no such analogies. They just shut down opponents.

“I read that (book) when (his son) was a kid,” said Chuck Daly, the Pistons coach who has pushed all the right buttons of late.

Two major factors have been at play. Edwards, who replaced John Salley at starting power forward early in the season, has been a stabilizer in the front court, allowing Laimbeer to drift out to the foul line and higher to set picks or shoot jumpers.

And Dennis Rodman became a starter when Mark Aguirre hurt his back in a Jan. 21 loss to the Lakers. That’s when the Pistons started their run.

Though the Pistons already were leading the league in fewest points allowed when the streak began, they’ve shaved almost a full point off that average, to an even 97 per game.

Opponents are shooting a league-low .443. The Pistons have held teams under 100 points this season a league-high 37 times. And Detroit has won 30 games by 10 points or more.

“It’s not so much their quickness out front,” Washington guard Darrell Walker said, referring to Dumars and Thomas. “Those guys are talented. They’re going to score some points. I don’t care who’s guarding them. But I think their defense is what’s really the key to their basketball team.

“When you get in the playoffs, you’ve got to stop people in a half-court game, and they can stop you. Because they’re big and they step over and they’re aggressive and they bump you when you go through the lane. They bump you every chance they can bump you. And I think that’s what separates them from the rest of the teams in the league.”

Opponents say, “ ‘God, I have to go out there and work, work, work. I don’t want to do that,’ ” Rodman said. “That’s an advantage for me.”

Now Detroit has the luxury of choosing to go strictly for offense off the bench (Aguirre and Vinnie Johnson), or a combination (Aguirre and Salley). Or, as they did in the fourth quarter against Chicago last week, the Pistons can still go for the full defensive look, leaving Rodman, Dumars and Edwards in with Salley. That group, with Johnson, blew out the Bulls in Chicago Stadium.

Then there was the rush to get on their charter, Roundball One, and get out of town. The Pistons are always in a hurry to get to the next game, to get another one under their belts and get closer to the playoffs. No music in the locker room. Just their trainer, Mike Abdenour, screaming, “Let’s go, let’s go!” every eight seconds or so.

“We don’t worry about (other people),” Daly said. “We just do what we do. We have a lot of guys who like to compete, like to get out and play. That’s all it is, is hard work.”