Detroit Free Press

LOS ANGLES -- They arrived like the plumbers called to fix the movie stars' sink. Barely noticed, anonymous but ...

First, they pulled him off the bus. Literally. Suspended him from the job he loved, accused him of stealing money, said his team of high school girls, looking anxiously out the bus windows, would have to play its championship game without him.Then, over the next 18 months, like crows plucking at a carcass, certain forces in the Southfield school system slowly took away everything else Ben Kelso had worked for.

Bill Plaschke writes for the Los Angeles Times.Their leading scorer goes to work in the ideal accessory of all unfortunates who wear the name "Pistons" on their shirt.A mask.Their leading rebounder's unkempt hair has not been cut since the last time his team made a scoreboard sweat.About five years, he says.The only bit of greatness in their locker room is the engraving upon the one and only championship ring there.Lakers, it reads.

Things we forget about Tayshaun Prince: 1) He is only 24. 2) He barely played last season. 3) He is a college graduate. 4) He already has, in his young adult life, moved from the West to the Southeast to the Midwest. 5) While he looks like a cartoonishly skinny, open-mouthed kid, he grew up in Compton, Calif., the hard side of L.A., which means 6) he really wanted to be drafted by the Lakers and 7) he is about to go home and play them.

MITCH ALBOM All night long they had been trying to snare the only thing that mattered, a lead. They never had it. At one point, it was as far off as a ship on the horizon. Slowly, they swam in, clipping away, a point here, a basket there, until finally, finally, in the fourth quarter, they reached sea level. A tie at 54 points. A tie at 57. A tie at 59. A Chauncey Billups three-pointer. A Ben Wallace turnaround. A Tayshaun Prince block. Whatever was in the arsenal, it was coming out now. Richard Hamilton took a forearm to the face, hit the deck, got up and made two free throws.

In the final scene of "The Deer Hunter," the friends and family of a fallen soldier gather at their small-town bar after his funeral. It is early in the day. A few of them break out eggs and scramble them. A few more cut bread or set the table. They sit together quietly. Then, in perhaps the most moving moment of the film, one man begins to sing.God bless America,Land that I love . . .

An hour before Friday's game, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle was in the tunnel outside the locker room, talking to a ...

It was tight and tense and there was an exhausted, sweaty feeling that whoever scored the next basket would emerge ...