1988 Overview
From Hoopedia
1987-88 NBA Season
Say what you want about Pat Riley, but the man had focus. “Too much focus,” his Laker players were known to grumble on occasion. Riley’s response? Keep pushing. Maybe change the pressure points. But keep pushing.
The Lakers had won four NBA titles in the 1980s, but after Los Angeles claimed the 1987 crown, Riley immediately set his sights on another goal. No NBA team had won back-to-back championships since the Boston Celtics turned the trick in 1968 and 1969. Many believed that the league’s expansion had spread the talent pool so widely that repeating had become nearly impossible.
Riley, though, wasn’t satisfied with the Lakers’ position as the “Team of the 1980s.” He decided that back-to-back championships would stamp his team as one of the all-time greats. So he did a peculiar thing: While the team sprayed champagne in the locker room to celebrate their victory in the 1987 Finals, Riley guaranteed the Lakers would repeat.
That guarantee left his players furious. It put immense pressure on them as well as their coach, something he craved and they detested. But it worked.
The Lakers fashioned the NBA’s best record at 62-20, as Byron Scott (21.7 points per game.) and James Worthy (19.7 points per game) assumed a greater share of the scoring load from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson.
The Lakers’ bench was at its deepest. Mychal Thompson, a key reserve on the 1987 title team, was now sharing the center spot with Abdul-Jabbar. Third-year forward A.C. Green also came of age, and veterans Michael Cooper and Kurt Rambis made important contributions.
As the Lakers looked to repeat, a new challenger rose in the East. Detroit had pushed the Celtics to the limit before losing in the Eastern Finals in 1987. Boston responded in 1988 by winning an East-high 57 games, but the Pistons came right back after them, winning 54 games and the Central Division.
General Manager Jack McCloskey and Coach Chuck Daly had surrounded 6-1 superstar guard Isiah Thomas with rugged rebounders Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn, scorers Adrian Dantley, Joe Dumars and Vinnie Johnson, and young, aggressive defensive forwards Dennis Rodman and John Salley.
Thomas yearned for recognition, not as one of the NBA’s top guards or top little men, but as one of the game’s top players. After leading Indiana to the 1981 NCAA championship, he entered the league with Detroit after the Pistons had suffered through a 21-61 campaign in 1980-81.
By Thomas’ third season, the Pistons had a head coach, Daly, who had figured out how to maximize his superstar’s strengths so that a team built around a point guard could contend.
Finally, the 1988 playoffs became their time to mature. The Pistons went 11-5 in the Eastern Conference Playoffs, and they finally vanquished the Celtics by winning two of three games in Boston Garden.
Driven by Riley, the Lakers outlasted Dallas in seven hard-fought games, with the home team winning each time. In the Finals, Los Angeles again needed every bit of its home-court advantage, coming back from a 3-2 deficit to win two close games in the Forum to become the first repeat champions since the 1968-69 Boston Celtics.
Although Detroit lost the 1988 NBA Finals in seven games, Thomas’s effort in Game 6, when he sustained a seriously sprained ankle but still scored 43 points, stamped him as an NBA legend in the making. Motoring around on a bum ankle, Thomas scored 25 points in the third quarter, which remains an NBA Finals record.
“What Isiah Thomas did in the second half was just incredible,” marveled Riley in his postgame interviews.
Also significant was James Worthy’s offensive effort in the face of Detroit’s physical defense, a strong enough performance to earn “Big Game James” Finals MVP honors.
The victory gave Riley the repeat he had pushed for, but after Game 7 his players stood close by—to make sure he made no more guarantees about championships.
