Arms And The Man

It's time to take a 20-second timeout for a reality check. Did we see what we thought we saw in the first three games of the NBA Finals between the Houston Rockets and the New York Knicks? Was that really Houston center Hakeem Olajuwon, this season's MVP, being bottled up on a regular basis by a barrel-chested former CBA forward with a five-inch height disadvantage? Did a happy-go-lucky rookie guard known as Smilin' Sam really slip into Madison Square Garden and steal a fourth quarter right out from under the noses of the disbelieving Knicks? Could that have been NBA commissioner David Stern, whose league had glamour to spare just a year ago (page 30), trying to convince a group of reporters that the term Uglyball wasn't going to become a part of the NBA's lexicon? And that wasn't quintessential New Yorker Spike Lee in a cowboy hat, Texas two-steppin' around a Houston ranch, was it?

You can stop rubbing your eyes. It all happened last week as the Rockets took a 2-1 lead in a best-of-seven series that had everything except the one feature almost everyone anticipated: a battle for the ages between the two dominant centers, Olajuwon and the Knicks' Patrick Ewing. The two big men had given the usual disclaimers before the series—it's not Ewing versus Olajuwon, it's the Knicks versus the Rockets, they insisted—and it turns out we should have believed them. Although both had their moments, they spent much of their time as supporting players, while their teammates took turns as scene-stealers.

"A series always has lots of subplots," said Houston coach Rudy Tomjanovich after the Rockets' 93-89 Game 3 victory on Sunday night. "It's not that Hakeem and Patrick haven't been a major part of the story; it's just that they haven't been the whole story."

The whole story has had several twists, and most of them have involved resiliency. Game 1, an 85-78 Houston victory, was notable for the atrocious shooting performance by both teams, especially New York (34.1%). But the Knicks came back to make 52.2% of their field goal attempts in a 91-83 Game 2 win that featured a sloppy and tentative effort from the Houston backcourt.

Those two games proved that when either team's guards aren't effective from the outside, the result is, as Dennis Hopper's demented referee says in the shoe commercial, "Bad things, man. Bad things." However, rookie guard Sam Cassell helped the Rocket backcourt atone for its Game 2 difficulties with 15 points in Game 3, including a three-pointer that put Houston ahead to stay.

Neither Olajuwon nor Ewing made as many as half his shots in any of the first three games, with Ewing shooting 26 of 74 (35.1%, down from 47.4% in the first three rounds of the playoffs) and Olajuwon 28 of 63 (44.4%, down from 52.7%). Through Game 3 the confrontation was a virtual draw. Although Olajuwon had the edge in scoring (24.7 points per game to 19.0), Ewing got the nod in rebounding (11.7 boards per game to 9.3) and blocked shots (5.0 to 4.3), and he had been more of a factor in the fourth quarters.

While Olajuwon caused most of Ewing's shooting problems, the Knicks sent a squadron of defenders at Olajuwon, the most effective of whom was Anthony Mason, their muscular, 6'7", 250-pound forward. Mason has a résumé that reads like a soldier of fortune's, and a mentality to match. "Have gun, will travel, baby," he says. "I'll take anybody they ask me to—guard, forward, center—and try to lock 'em up. Olajuwon's a great player, but it doesn't matter who I guard. I've played in Turkey, Austria, Venezuela, the CBA, the USBL, West 4th Street Park. I had to travel a long way. It keeps you hungry. You know that you never want to go back."

There's one other place Mason has been—limbo. That's where he was after New York coach Pat Riley suspended him for the last three games of the regular season for insubordination. The same feisty, rebellious temperament that helped Mason reach the NBA sometimes gets him into hot water with his disciplinarian coach. "There wasn't any one thing or any one specific comment," Riley says. "When it comes to these kinds of things, it's usually cumulative."

The trouble began when Riley kept Mason on the bench for the second half of an 87-84 loss to Atlanta on April 19. Riley gave Charles Smith most of the minutes at small forward to get an idea of how Smith's surgically repaired knee would hold up in the postseason. Mason told the press about his displeasure at sitting, indirectly insulting Smith in the process, and Riley came down hard. Riley says he waited until "one minute before three o'clock," on April 25—the deadline for setting the playoff rosters—before finally making the decision to reinstate Mason for the postseason.

Olajuwon no doubt wishes Riley had let the deadline pass. Although Mason has a body that looks as if it should be blindsiding quarterbacks, he has remarkably nimble feet. They were made even quicker by his stint in Venezuela, where, he says, hand checking is not tolerated, which is probably beyond the imagination of most NBA fans. "Your entire defense depended on proper positioning, fundamental footwork," he says. "After that South American stuff, D in the NBA is a snap."