John Salley and Bryon Scott faced off against each other a fair few times on the court and they recently got face-to-face again, this time on a podcast. Salley appeared on Byron Scott’s Fast Break podcast, where he was asked if Scott’s Los Angeles Lakers would have beaten his Detroit Pistons in the 1989 NBA Finals if not for injuries.
John Salley: “No, because we had home-court advantage. So, we felt the reason we lost.”
Bryon Scott: “You know I’mma gonna say something about that, but I’m gonna let him go ahead and finish. Me and him already have some arguments.”
Salley: “They were healthy and we didn’t have Isiah (Thomas) and we took them to Game 7 (in the 1988 NBA Finals). So, imagine after having a chip on your shoulder, getting the best record of the year, 63 wins, and having a vendetta and playing back in the D? They wouldn’t have been able to eat at any restaurants, they wouldn’t have been able to walk out anywhere. They would have been food poisoned every time. We would have sent out Killer Bees. It’s a ton of things that would have happened.”
Scott: “… I’m pretty sure it would have went seven games. No doubt about it, if I was healthy and Magic (Johnson) was healthy… Those were a lot of great points like you said. The vendetta, home-court advantage but we were going for three in a row, which hadn’t been done in I don’t know how long. It was 20 years before you won back-to-back, then we did it, then boom y’all did it right behind us. So, I think with that history that we had on our side, trying to win three in a row, I still think we would have got that one.”
Salley: “We seriously had the Jewish Mafia called the Purple Gang ready to beat y’all down. They would have never believed it was a whole bunch of Jewish gangsters with Yamahas chopping y’all down. We had it set up.”
Salley was obviously joking about the mafia and the food poisoning but he did make some good points apart from that. I think there’s a good chance the Pistons would have won even if Bryon Scott and Magic Johnson were healthy.
As Salley pointed out, Isiah Thomas got hurt when the teams played in the 1988 NBA Finals and that series had gone the distance. Thomas rolled his ankle in Game 6 and while he put in one of the finest displays of his career in that contest, he was ineffective in their Game 7 loss. Would they have won with a healthy Thomas? Maybe.
The Pistons had revenge on their minds heading into the 1988-89 season and they proceeded to dominate the competition in the campaign. They finished with a 63-19 record which was easily the best in the NBA and it was the best record in franchise history too. The Pistons then swept the Boston Celtics and the Milwaukee Bucks before beating the Chicago Bulls in six games to make it back to the Finals.
The Lakers, meanwhile, had gone 62-20 in 1987-88 but saw a bit of a drop off in 1988-89, as they went 57-25. They were dominant come playoff time, though, as they swept the Portland Trail Blazers, Seattle SuperSonics, and Phoenix Suns to make their third straight Finals appearance.
The Lakers had their eyes on a three-peat but suffered a major blow when Scott suffered a severe hamstring injury during practice before Game 1. They would lose that game 109-97 but an even bigger blow was to come in the next one.
Johnson pulled his hamstring in the third quarter of Game 2 and had to exit the game. The Pistons capitalized on his absence and won 108-105 to take a 2-0 lead. Johnson then attempted to play through the pain in Game 3 but was forced to leave after just five minutes and the Lakers were all but done after that. The Pistons won Game 3 114-110 and then Game 4 105-97 to complete a stunning sweep.
Considering how the games were relatively close, I think it’s fair to say it wouldn’t have been a sweep if Johnson and Scott were healthy. The series could well have gone the distance with them but with Game 7 being in Detroit, you’d have had to give the Pistons the edge. It’s a pity we’ll never really know how things would have panned out.
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