King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Kobe Bryant hits a shot for the ages to save the Lakers, and the Pistons must wish it were only a nightmare.

June 9, 2004 | The game was over. The Pistons had won. They were going back to Detroit with a 2-0 lead and three home games coming up, a perch from which no team had ever fallen in the NBA Finals.

But you don't write off the Lakers, this damnedest of all teams. The Lakers die like Freddie Krueger, like Jason on a Friday. When they're flat-lining, that's when they're really dangerous. They're harder to snuff than Rasputin. Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant make them so. At the end of Game 2, it was Kobe Bryant.

Detroit had been in front 87-83 as the clock ducked under a minute and the Pistons had the ball. Richard Hamilton took a pass on the right wing, dribbled past Bryant, eluded Karl Malone's help defense and launched a 12-foot floater. It bounced off the front rim and then the backboard and came off.

Ben Wallace of the Pistons had outmuscled Luke Walton for position underneath, but the carom off the board went over his head, behind him, toward Malone and O'Neal, who suddenly became interested in a rebound chance he'd been ignoring, as had become his habit in the second half. Wallace leaped, leaning backward, caught the ball in the crook of his right wrist and went back up for the put-back before any of those three Lakers could get off the ground.

Ballgame. Down by 11 in the third quarter, the Pistons now had a six-point lead with 47.8 seconds left, their biggest lead of the game. Wallace knew it. He trotted down court making muscles with both arms.

Not quite. Bryant tossed up a 3-pointer from just left of center over Tayshaun Prince. No good, but Shaq rebounded, scored and got a huge break when Wallace was called for a ticky-tack foul he wasn't even guilty of in the first place, as O'Neal had jumped into him while going up for his put-back shot.

There had been a stretch there in the fourth quarter when the Lakers couldn't buy a foul call and the Pistons had benefited from several questionable whistles. It actually had me wondering for a moment whether there really is a league-wide conspiracy to make sure the Lakers win the title, as so many readers assure me there is.

O'Neal hit the free throw with 35.9 to go for 89-86 and the Lakers needed a stop. No, but the Pistons gave it to them.

Next page: The biggest shot in NBA history? Maybe not, but wow