Worthy’s Effort in Vain as Detroit Edges the Lakers

PONTIAC, Mich. —  When is a gamble not a good gamble? James Worthy said he knows now.

“When it doesn’t work,” he said.

When does Kelly Tripucka shoot with his eyes closed, as Maurice Lucas suggested? Certainly not when he makes a game-winning shot.

“Maurice knows better than that,” Tripucka said. “I always keep my eyes open on last-second shots.”

If you were casting your vote for either the Lakers or the Detroit Pistons Sunday afternoon, the eyes had it.

Worthy and the Lakers gambled and lost to the Pistons, 118-115. The Lakers gambled that they could play a lousy first half and still come back to win. They couldn’t.

Then Worthy gambled that he could steal a pass intended for Tripucka with the score tied in the last six seconds. That didn’t work either.

Playing a dangerous game of chance, the Lakers rolled snake-eyes in the Silverdome before 28,548. They watched Worthy’s swipe miss the ball, then saw Tripucka, his eyes open wide, drill a three-pointer from 28 feet away with two seconds left to send the Lakers to a defeat they all said they deserved.

“The Pistons earned it, no two ways about it,” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said. “We just about had it, though.”

Because Abdul-Jabbar scored 38 points, the Lakers managed to work themselves into a position in the last few seconds to steal a game in which they didn’t seem to belong for a half.

If only Worthy had managed to get the ball away from Tripucka, the Lakers might have pulled it off. Not this time, but that’s how close they came.

Worthy’s two pressure free throws tied the score, 115-115, with six seconds remaining. After a timeout, Tripucka inbounded the ball to Bill Laimbeer, who quickly passed back to Tripucka as Worthy rushed up to try for a steal.

“My heart jumped about two feet,” Laimbeer said.

However, Worthy couldn’t quite wrestle the ball away from Tripucka, and as he went one way without it, Tripucka calmly sank his game-winner.

“James had one hand on the ball and I had two,” said Tripucka, who hoisted his jumper over the outstretched arms of Lucas, then raised his arms in triumph as the ball swished cleanly through the net.

Afterward, Lucas said he just got to Tripucka too late.

“But on that shot, I think he must have had his eyes closed,” Lucas said.

Tripucka said he was watching, but he didn’t see Lucas coming at him. He had a different vision.

“All I was seeing in my head was James Worthy going in for a layup at the other end,” Tripucka said. “There was no chance for Lucas to block the shot.

“There was only a chance for James Worthy to be a hero.”

Tripucka became the hero instead, something new and different for the Pistons in this troubling season. After all, they’re only 19-21, Tripucka pointed out.

“I know this victory comes from my shot and that makes me a hero, but I don’t know if it’s going to turn our season around,” he said.

The Lakers still had one more chance at tying the game, but Worthy threw the ball away to Vinnie Johnson while trying to set up a desperation heave.

They might have wound up with a better shot, but because Coach Pat Riley didn’t have a full timeout left after Tripucka’s bomb, the Lakers had to call a 20-second timeout. That meant they were forced to inbound the ball beneath their own basket instead of at midcourt.

Riley used the last full timeout with 11 seconds left, just after Isiah Thomas drove to the basket unmolested and scored on a layup that give the Pistons a 115-113 lead.

“If I had taken a 20-second timeout then, we wouldn’t have had time to set up,” Riley explained. “If I had, we would have had to go full court with 11 seconds to try to get a tie.”

As it turned out, all they got for their trouble was a defeat. Since they are still 31-7, defeats are rare occurrences for the Lakers, but they paved the way for this one with a poor defensive effort in the first half.

“If you’re going to lose, lose like we did,” Magic Johnson said. “Lose on a 30-footer instead of just getting killed like we were in the first half. Nobody liked what we saw then.”

What they were watching was Detroit rookie guard Joe Dumars scoring 12 of his 18 points in the first half, which ended with the Pistons ahead, 63-52. The margin could have been worse, but the Lakers couldn’t have.

The Pistons made 61% of their shots, many of them uncontested, as the Lakers applied very little defensive pressure.

“We lost it in the first half,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “We did that because we didn’t play any defense.”

But in true Laker off-on fashion, they switched on their game in the second half. The Lakers made 17 of 20 shots in the third quarter when Abdul-Jabbar scored 16 points. Mike McGee’s three-pointer at the buzzer cut the Piston lead to 95-91.

Playing on a sore right knee, Johnson passed out 18 assists and although he shot only 5 for 15, Johnson helped Worthy get the ball often enough in the right places that Worthy finished with 28 points.

Consecutive dunks by Abdul-Jabbar and Worthy’s three-point play tied the score at 109-109 with 3:06 to play, but the Lakers were never able to get ahead the entire game.

Worthy said he felt badly that he missed the steal, but he was also surprised he didn’t get it.

“I thought I had the ball and I was going the other way with it,” he said. “It was a bad gamble, but it wouldn’t have been a bad gamble if I had gotten it. I’ll tell you, losing like this is not fun. In fact, it really hurts.”

According to the odds, the Lakers may not have expected to be injured by Tripucka, who had made only two other three-point shots this season. But when you gamble, you don’t always win.

Laker notes Both Detroit newspapers ran front-page stories Sunday on the notion that the Lakers could be the NBA’s best team ever. Now that they’re only one loss ahead of Boston, they may not even be the best team this season after Wednesday night when they play the Celtics. The 1971-72 Lakers finished with the best regular season in NBA history, 69-13. Pat Riley thought about cautioning the Lakers about the praise they’ve been getting, but decided against it. It was suggested to Riley that the Lakers might be better off to go ahead and lose 13 games and get it over with. “We’re working on it,” he said. . . . Magic Johnson said his bruised right knee, which forced him to miss the last Laker game, is still swollen. “If I wasn’t playing in Detroit, I probably wouldn’t have played at all,” said Johnson, who is from East Lansing. Johnson is listed as questionable for today’s game in Chicago against the Bulls.