Up In The Air

Last Saturday, moments after losing Game 2 of their first-round Western Conference playoff series 104-94 to the Los Angeles Lakers, the defending NBA champion Houston Rockets were in the visitors' locker room at the Forum, with half of their body parts packed in ice. Guard Sam Cassell, his surgically repaired right elbow heavily wrapped in an ice-filled bandage, could have easily been mistaken for a middle reliever. Swingman Mario Elie was being chilled from his right shoulder to his fingertips and from his left shin to his foot, as if he'd been sideswiped on an L.A. freeway. Guard Clyde Drexler, his right knee and right ankle padded with mounds of cubes, explained that his limited mobility during the game had been caused not by pain in his knee, on which he had arthroscopic surgery in late February, but in his ankle, which he had rolled two days earlier, in Game 1. Drexler's ankle had swollen so much during pregame warmups that he had upgraded his sneakers from lowtop to midcuts for extra support. "It only hurts when I take off—and when I land," he said calmly.

Across from Drexler's locker, center Hakeem Olajuwon limped to his chair, favoring the swollen knees that had kept him out of 10 games during the final four weeks of the regular season. Even while surveying his teammates' ice-pack-covered limbs and joints, he declared that it was the Lakers who should be worried. "I'm encouraged," said Olajuwon, when asked about the Game 2 loss, which evened the series at one game apiece as the action shifted to the Summit in Houston for Games 3 and 4 on Tuesday and Thursday nights. "We gave them this game. The Lakers have not beaten us yet."

Indeed, the Rockets departed battered yet buoyant from their weekend in L.A. After holding the Lakers to a season-worst 34.9% shooting in an 87-83 Game 1 victory—a performance that so frustrated Los Angeles guard Magic Johnson that he openly questioned the offensive role assigned to him by coach Del Harris—Houston appeared poised to steal Game 2, until Olajuwon picked up his fifth and sixth fouls in a 19-second span in the fourth quarter. He was left to watch the final 10:05 from the bench.

At the time of Olajuwon's disqualification, the Rockets were down by only three points, 74-71. But with Houston's lethal weapon out of the game, Magic and guard Eddie Jones, who finished with 20 points and a career-high 11 rebounds, energized the Lakers. L.A. sent the Rockets to their first loss in their last nine road playoff games. "This was huge," said Lakers guard Anthony Peeler, who contributed nine fourth-quarter points in Game 2. "We knew if we went into Houston down 0-2, there was no way we'd come out alive."

Ever since last year, when they entered the playoffs as the sixth seed in the West yet went on to successfully defend their title, the Rockets have had a postseason mystique. During the recently concluded regular season, injuries ravaged Houston's lineup, leading to a 48-34 record and the No. 5 playoff seeding, but nobody underestimated the Rockets' postseason chances. The biggest reasons were the savvy of coach Rudy Tomjanovich and the talent and composure of Olajuwon.

But in Game 2 both men proved they're only human. When Olajuwon bumped Jones to pick up his fifth foul, Tomjanovich did not react quickly enough to hustle substitute Sam Mack into the game. "He was at the scorer's table," said Tomjanovich afterward. "We couldn't get him in. But I wasn't worried. We've been in that situation a zillion times, and the sixth foul has never happened."

In fact, Olajuwon had not fouled out of a playoff game since 1987. Shouldn't a veteran of his stature have known enough to take himself out? "Oh, sure," agreed Tomjanovich. "He should have run right off the floor." Instead, Olajuwon turned and ran down the court. When Peeler drove into the teeth of Houston's defense, Olajuwon aggressively moved to swat away his shot and was whistled for a foul.

Olajuwon later conceded that the final two calls against him were right. But the real issue, he insisted, was the correctness of earlier calls. Olajuwon was particularly irked by his fourth foul, which he claimed should have been given to teammate Chucky Brown but was whistled on him when Los Angeles center Vlade Divac pointed to the Dream's number 34 jersey. "The referees are supposed to govern the game," Olajuwon said. "If they are really sincere that those were real calls, then I'll have to respect that. I'll leave that to a higher authority."

For a while this season Harris felt that his team was benefiting from divine intervention—specifically the return of the 36-year-old Johnson following more than four years of retirement. After rejoining the Lakers in January, Johnson sparked them to a 29-11 record and the No. 4 seeding in the West. But in the weeks leading up to the playoffs, L.A. had come unstrung. High-scoring forward Cedric Ceballos went AWOL for four days. Clutch-shooting guard Nick Van Exel knocked referee Ron Garretson into the scorer's table and was suspended for the last seven regular-season games. Magic himself did the bump-and-whine with official Scott Foster and earned a suspension that forced him to sit out three of the final four games.

These disruptions seemed to leave the Lakers in disarray in Game 1. Los Angeles coughed the ball up 22 times and went scoreless for nearly eight minutes in the decisive final quarter. The Lakers chose to subject Olajuwon to single coverage, by Divac, and although the Dream poured in 33 points, the L.A. strategy allowed the Lakers to guard the two best Houston backcourtmen, Cassell and Drexler, more closely on the perimeter. Cassell and Drexler shot only 9 of 26 between them.