Hill's 33 Points Blast Celtics

Some day, Antoine Walker wants to be just like Grant Hill.

On Friday night, Hill showed him he's not quite there.

Hill outscored Walker 13-1 in the fourth quarter, helping the Detroit Pistons take a see-saw 93-83 victory over the Boston Celtics.

"I want to learn from playing Grant, because he's a superstar," Walker said. "Down the stretch, I was rushing things, but he took his time and made his moves. That's what I need to do."

Detroit led by 13 points in the third quarter and then trailed by as many as seven in the fourth before Hill took over.

"That's just how games with Boston go - you'll be up 15 and then you'll be down 15," said Hill, who finished with a game-high 33 points. "You know that you can always get back into it, and so can they. And in the end, like most NBA games, it will come down to whoever plays the best basketball in the last five or six minutes."

Walker led Boston with 22 points and 12 rebounds. The Celtics have lost four straight, while Detroit won for the eighth time in 10 games.

"We showed some positive signs tonight, but we gave it away with the last six minutes," Walker said. "It hurts, but we need to salvage the road trip and get one in Indiana on Sunday."

Walter McCarty and Vitaly Potapenko combined for nine points in a 14-0 Boston surge that put the Celtics ahead 61-60 in the third quarter. The last point came after Hill was called for a technical foul.

The Celtics expanded their margin to 78-71 early in the final period, ending a 12-minute stretch in which they outscored Detroit 32-12. But the Pistons came back, scoring the next eight points and taking a lead on Bison Dele's free throw with 6:25 left.

Detroit led one, 82-81, with four minutes left before Hill clinched the game with back-to-back spinning baseline drives. On the second he was fouled and converted the three-point play to make it 87-81 with 2:48 left.

"If we can keep playing like this, without the last-minute defensive lapses, I think we will win a lot of games this year," said Boston coach Rick Pitino. "We just ran into a great player who overpowered us."

Hill put an exclamation point on his personal 7-0 run with a open-court tomahawk dunk 20 seconds later.

"Everyone on the team made plays on defense at the end of the game, and Grant just took it over offensively," said Detroit coach Alvin Gentry. "Our defense down the stretch was as good as we've played all year - I don't think anyone could play Antoine Walker any better than Jerome Williams did tonight."

Detroit led 48-39 at the half, thanks to 10 second-quarter points off the bench from Stackhouse. Eight of Stackhouse's points came in a 13-2 run that broke open a close game.

Notes: Boston's Rookie of the Year contender, Paul Pierce, missed his second straight game with a sprained right ankle. ... Detroit forward Jerome Williams signed a three-year contract extension moments after Friday's game. Williams would have become a free agent at season's end. ... Potapenko, acquired in a deadline-beating trade Thursday night, scored eight points in 21 minutes for Boston.

©1999 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed