The sweep

A year earlier, in the same building, Detroit had lost the Finals in seven.

Isiah Thomas had played a twenty-five point third quarter on a rolled ankle in Game 6 and the Pistons had lost anyway. That defeat built the following season.

In 1989 they return with 63 wins and a playoff run of fifteen wins and two defeats.

Across from them the Lakers arrive damaged. Byron Scott was hurt before Game 1, Magic Johnson tore a hamstring in Game 2. Neither will play again in the series.

Game 4 does not look like an execution.

Los Angeles score 35 in the first quarter and lead. The Forum holds, James Worthy plays the best Finals game of his career and will finish with 40.

Then Detroit's defense closes. Twenty points conceded in the second quarter, twenty-three in the third, nineteen in the fourth.

It is the usual pattern: Chuck Daly rolls nine players, the opponent tires, and the gap opens at the point where nobody can keep the pace.

105-97. Joe Dumars is voted Finals MVP without once passing 27 points in a game of the series.

The sweep needs its context stated: the Lakers played two of the four games without their point guard and their starting shooting guard.

Detroit owe no apology for it. They had lost the previous year to a healthy team, they beat a fit Portland side in 1990, and they were objectively the best team in the league across those two seasons.

But history keeps a 4-0 with no footnote, and that is what makes this Finals ambiguous.

For Los Angeles it is the end. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retires after this game at forty-two. Showtime stops on a sweep it suffered.

For Detroit it is the start of a back-to-back, and the start of two years spent preventing Michael Jordan from existing.