Game 7!
The NBA Finals!
Doesn’t get any bigger than that, right!
It’s the Grand Canyon of games, the biggest on the planet, no the universe, no, even bigger than the Michael Jackson trial!
“Win or go Home!”
Of course, everyone is going home after the defending champion Detroit Pistons meet the host San Antonio Spurs in Game 7 Thursday night so one might say it’s “Win and go Home.” But no one will be leaving before the true character of man is revealed in the crucible of athletic competition, right?
Just like that day in 1994 . . .
“Let’s see,” said the Spurs’ Robert Horry, who played in the last Finals Game 7 with Houston that year. “I got up, had breakfast, went to shootaround, came back, took a nap, got up, put a pad on my wrist. I had a sprain, put ice on, it was sore, and I was ready.”
That wasn’t enough for the media Wednesday, probing here for what this all means and what one goes through. What about that game?
“To be honest, I just know we played New York,” Horry said. “That’s all I can remember.”
That was the game, someone said, when John Starks shot the Knicks, who lost the last two games after leading 3-2, out of it and cemented his reputation as a bonehead. Of course, now he’s working on a coaching career.
Horry brightened.
“I’m hoping Chauncey [Billups] or one of them gets that John Starks fever,” Horry said. “He was killing us all series. Then he couldn’t buy a bucket. I don’t know if it was pressure or just bad shooting.”
It may have been just bad shooting, but we need deeper meaning.
In any case, now it’s the Spurs versus the Pistons: The last two NBA champions, the league’s two best defensive teams, teams that have split their last 10 games with coaches who practice similar styles. Each had two blowout victories in the series. There’s only one player, Billups, averaging more than 20 points and both teams are averaging fewer than 90.
Now it boils down to one game to decide the season.
“Excited, just excited about it,” San Antonio’s Tim Duncan said.
No matter what happens Thursday, perhaps Duncan’s legacy will be affected the most. He has been regarded as maybe the best big man ever, but he has struggled with shooting and pressure situations the last four games.
When Horry hit that dramatic, overtime game-winner in Game 5, Duncan hugged him the hardest because he had missed 6 of 7 free throws down the stretch and had failed to score in overtime. In Game 6, Duncan rarely touched the ball in the fourth quarter. In Game 7, the Spurs say they will concentrate on getting him the ball.
“We forgot about Tim, he didn’t forget about anything,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said.
What Duncan will do with the ball could be the difference between MVP and MIA.
There are plenty of indicators here.
The Spurs have the home-court advantage. There has been a lot of blathering about that being what you play for all season.
The Pistons have the experience and resolve, having been in seventh games in the Eastern Conference finals against Miami and in last season’s playoffs against the defending champion Nets. They are 8-1 when facing elimination since recovering from a 3-1, first-round deficit against Tracy McGrady and Orlando in 2003 before losing to Larry Brown’s 76ers. They are 10-0 in that stretch when they could eliminate a team.
Only two teams, the last the 1977 Portland Trailblazers, have recovered from a 2-0 deficit to win the championship. No team ever has won two road Game 7’s (Detroit won in Miami) in one postseason and no team ever has won Games 6 and 7 on the road in the Finals.
“Our motto is, `If it ain’t rough, it ain’t right,'” Billups said. “We always make it tough on ourselves, but we always [find a way]. We’re just tough as nails.”
If there is a surprise in this series, it has been the Spurs’ defensive inactivity. They have been slow to loose balls and rebounds, limiting their second-chance points.
Detroit’s Tayshaun Price had two crucial offensive rebounds in Game 6 that turned the game around. The Pistons are averaging 10 more shots per game, have twice as many steals and 37 fewer turnovers. The Spurs are fortunate to be playing now as the Pistons have been the better team for the last four games–except for the two seconds when Rasheed Wallace forgot to guard Horry in Game 5.
“It feels real good to prove all you cats wrong,” said Wallace, who pointed to a grammar school championship as his biggest game.
The Pistons guards, Billups and Richard Hamilton, have proved too strong for the Spurs perimeter, even with Bruce Bowen banging Hamilton around.
In Game 7, the Spurs might have to double team more with someone like Horry and dare Ben Wallace or Rasheed Wallace to beat them. A career 51 percent shooter in the regular season and playoffs, Duncan is shooting just 43 percent against the Pistons. He has been harassed constantly and apparently just hopes to hit the rim on free throws. The Spurs need a big game from him because Manu Ginobili seems about out on his feet after being the national Olympic hero last summer for Argentina, making his first All-Star Game and having two big games to open this series.
“They have been in this situation before,” Duncan said of the Pistons. “They are defending champs. They have been down in the series and they always have responded very well.”
The question is: How will the Spurs respond? There has been a lot of talk about relaxing and enjoying the attention and it is just a game, though there were about 700 reporters asking about it.
Horry, occasionally the philosopher, noted of his seventh game championship with the 1994 Rockets, “Pressure can burst a pipe or make a diamond. It made us shine.”
The Pistons have thrived in these things while this Spurs group never has been in one. The only time the franchise won a playoff Game 7 was in 1990 when Larry Brown was its coach.
After being down 2-0, it almost seems as if the Pistons have become the favorites. They have beaten the Spurs three of the last four and broke a 10-game losing streak in San Antonio in Game 6. The final game will be a record-tying 25th playoff game this year for the Pistons, who have endured the long season of the Auburn Hills brawl and Brown’s uncertain future. This is likely to be Brown’s last game as Pistons coach, though both teams figure to be around as contenders for several years.
“I really don’t think there will be a loser coming out of this,” Brown said.
We’ll be the judge of that.
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sasmith@tribune.com
