There's Just No Doubting Thomas

By the time Atlanta and Detroit finish banging bodies, flinging elbows and talking trash in their Round 2 playoff, the survivor's Eastern Conference final versus Boston or Milwaukee will seem like two weeks of R & R. So be afraid, Celtics or Bucks. Be very afraid.

Detroit's 89-88 victory at the Pontiac Silverdome on Sunday gave the Pistons a 3-1 lead in this, the best and brightest of the NBA's second-round series. To be sure, Boston and Milwaukee are not exactly coasting through their war, which Boston led 3-1 after a 138-137 double-overtime victory on Sunday. But the belief that the eventual Eastern champion will emerge from Detroit-Atlanta is not all that absurd. Or at least no more absurd than the selection of shots that were served up by one Isiah Thomas, who in the last two games has treated the Hawks like foreign invaders to his home playground.

"There aren't any great teams this year, only very, very good ones," said Thomas, before lighting up Atlanta in Game 4. "And right now, we are one of the very, very good ones."

Atlanta and Detroit are like two branches of an old family—their roots are all tangled up, but that doesn't mean they necessarily care for each other. The teams are linked, first of all, by a chain of frustration that finally ended this year when they finished one-two in the NBA Central, ahead of perennial champion Milwaukee. The Bucks are invariably characterized as well coached, disciplined and gutty, while the Hawks and Pistons have been considered erratic, undisciplined and lacking in heart.

On June 18, 1984, Atlanta and Detroit made a big trade—the Hawks got Antoine Carr and Cliff Levingston and gave up Dan Roundfield, who did nothing in Detroit and subsequently went to Washington, where he became a spent Bullet. Score one for the Hawks. Moreover, it was the Pistons who cut Spud Webb in the 1985 preseason, enabling Atlanta to pick him up and unleash him on an unsuspecting NBA.

The Pistons finally got something back this season when Ron Rothstein, an Atlanta scout and assistant for six years, became Detroit coach Chuck Daly's top assistant. Rothstein brought with him the intensity of his mentor, Hawk coach Mike Fratello, as well as Fratello's aggressive, double-teaming defensive concepts. Result? Detroit reduced its points-against average from 113 to 107.8 and its opponents' shooting percentage from 49.2 to 46.2.

The connections don't end there. The two head coaches are close friends, which makes Fratello's impersonation of Daly's hair-smoothing, cufflink-straightening ritual all the more deadly. Daly counters with an apt characterization of Fratello's curly perm: "the Roman Emperor look." The teams' point guards, Thomas and Atlanta's Glenn (Doc) Rivers, are also old friends, emerging from the same mean-street Chicago playgrounds. Thomas, in fact, was an usher at Rivers's wedding last spring.

So it was only fitting that, during an ignescent third period shuck-and-jive binge in Game 3 at the Silverdome, Thomas cut out his buddy's heart and diced it into 25 pieces, one for every point that gave him an alltime, single-quarter playoff-scoring record (a record Golden State's Eric "Sleepy" Floyd would break when he scored 29 points in one quarter on Sunday). That's the kind of series it has been.

Atlanta, which had the NBA's third-best record (57-25), seemed a clear favorite before the series, though the teams had split six regular-season games. The Hawks were much bigger—their starting five is a cumulative 14 inches taller than Detroit's—and supposedly much deeper. But there were indications the Pistons were not about to roll over. They had swept Washington 3-0 in the first round of the playoffs, and Isiah, his wide eyes burning with playoff hunger, had been spectacular.

The Hawks, meanwhile, had been less than spectacular in disposing of their first-round opponent, Indiana, in four games. Still, forward Dominique Wilkins had been so confident of a sweep that, after Atlanta's first two victories at home, he packed only one shirt for the trip to Indianapolis. When the Pacers won Game 3, 96-87, Wilkins had some shopping to do. Detroit was certainly more than a one-shirt opponent, but that didn't stop power forward Kevin Willis from predicting that the Pistons would fall in five, a pronouncement that revved engines all over Motor City.