“I’m not saying the Pistons gave it away, but they had their chance to win” – Pat Riley credited 1984 Finals lessons for Lakers 1988 triumph originally appeared on Basketball Network.
Pat Riley put a lot of pressure on his Los Angeles Lakers after he guaranteed they would win their second straight NBA championship in 1988.
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Magic Johnson wasn’t happy about it. No one in the Lakers locker room was happy about it. But the group still delivered, beating the Detroit Pistons in seven games.
Still, Riley didn’t point to his guarantee as the only source of inspiration for the Lakers’ title run. Instead, he remembered what happened four years earlier.
“We learned in 1984 that you can’t give a championship away. I’m not saying the Pistons gave it away, but they had their chance to win. That comes with maturity and they are on the verge of breaking through,” the legendary head coach said after leading the Lakers to their 11th title.
Lakers’ resiliency thwarted Pistons
The Lakers entered the Finals as the best team in the NBA, coming off a 62-win regular season. They swept the San Antonio Spurs in the first round and beat the Utah Jazz and Dallas Mavericks (both in seven games) en route to the championship round.
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The Pistons finished the regular season as the second seed in the East with a 54-28 record. It took them 16 games to get to the Finals — they beat the Washington Bullets, Chicago Bulls and Boston Celtics.
The Pistons entered the series against the Lakers as underdogs. But they pushed the defending champions to the limit.
Detroit won Game 1, stealing the homecourt advantage from the Lakers. However, the purple and gold won the next two games, seemingly taking control of the series. The next two games were in Detroit, and the result was surprising — the Pistons went to Los Angeles with a 3-2 series lead.
All they had to win was one more. One more win, and they would’ve won the first championship in the franchise’s history. But that didn’t happen.
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A controversial call on Bill Laimbeer against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar proved crucial in Game 6. The Lakers’ big man converted his two free throws to secure a 103-102 victory that forced Game 7.
The Pistons had a chance to win the series decider with about five seconds remaining. But after two missed free throws by Byron Scott, they blew that opportunity — they failed to even put up a shot as time expired.
Riley’s team won the game 108-105 and claimed their second-straight NBA title.
Pistons’ blunder looked familiar
That Game 7 sequence brought back memories of Game 2 of the 1984 Finals, with James Worthy and Magic Johnson as the protagonists.
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Worthy made an errant pass that was intercepted by Gerald Henderson. On the other hand, Johnson inexplicably dribbled out the clock, costing his team a chance to win the series.
That wasn’t the only costly mistake Magic made throughout that series. In Game 4, he threw a poor pass to Worthy in regulation that forced the game into overtime. In the extra period, he missed two pivotal free throws, allowing the Boston Celtics to tie the series at 2-2.
As hurtful as that 1984 Finals was for Magic and the Lakers, it was a learning experience. It helped the team mature and figure out how to handle pressure situations.
The Lakers thrived in the following years, winning three championships during that period (1985, 1987, and 1988).
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This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jun 14, 2025, where it first appeared.