Pistons, Spurs Will Play Right Way, but They Won’t Be Must-See TV

You have logged your complaints about the NBA for years: too much one-on-one play, no respect for the fundamentals, too blingy.

In response, these NBA Finals are like a letter from the vice president of customer relations. The San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons are two teams, not a pair of 12-man rosters. They will play hard, they will play together, they will play smart and they won’t bicker over who gets the ball.

And you won’t watch.

At least, that’s what history tells us. When the efficient, professional Spurs showed up in the Finals two years ago the TV ratings plummeted to 6.5, an all-time low. When the Lakers and their dysfunctional collection of superstars returned to the stage last year, ratings jumped 77% to an 11.5.

That’s how our society is. We complain about the junk on television, then everyone tunes in to watch people eating insects or Paris Hilton doing whatever it is Paris Hilton does.

“I think those who really understand the game are really going to enjoy this series,” Spur forward Bruce Bowen said. “It’s not a matter of one team dominating another. It’s not about the flash or anything like that, and who’s putting up the most points, certain players scoring 40 and 50, things of that nature. It’s a matter of two good basketball teams that are well-coached, both of them understand the defensive aspect of the game.”

So why no love? The Spurs have the highest winning percentage of any major sports team over the last eight years, but how many Spur jerseys do you see outside of San Antonio? What’s wrong with winning without arrests and contract holdouts?

“It doesn’t sell,” Bowen said. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t sell.”

We reward home runs, not sacrifice bunts. We pay big bucks to see the speedy running backs, not the offensive linemen who open holes for them.

And the NBA has always thought in celestial terms, hooking on to such stars as Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan in the 1980s and riding them to new heights of popularity.

“I know the league, they’re all about the glitz and glamour and the quote-unquote superstar players,” Piston reserve Darvin Ham said. “We have superstar players on both of these teams. I hate that we both get the knock of playing unentertaining basketball. I felt like a total team effort from both ends -- people using all of their players and sharing the ball and using really good teamwork -- I thought that was appealing basketball.”

Instead of looking at what’s missing -- namely, the Lakers or the 1990s Chicago Bulls -- let’s see what’s on hand.

You have the defending champion Pistons and the previous champions, the Spurs, only the third time the two most recent title winners have met in the Finals. (The Lakers and Boston Celtics did it last, in 1987.)

You have coach-of-the-year winners at both ends of the scorer’s table in Larry Brown and Gregg Popovich.

You have a two-time most valuable player in Tim Duncan, a three-time defensive player of the year in Ben Wallace, the most outstanding player of the 1999 NCAA Final Four in Richard Hamilton, and not one but two players who have earned the nickname “Big Shot,” Robert Horry and Chauncey Billups.

If you crave the old flair of the ABA, there’s Ben Wallace’s Afro.

If there’s drama it’s only the Shakespearean kind, that eternal restlessness in Brown’s soul that compels him to constantly move on to the next job. There’s an office chair in Cleveland awaiting him after this series ends.

And for the casual fan the promise of a few gratuitous shots of Tony Parker’s girlfriend, “Desperate Housewives” star Eva Longoria, ought to be worth tuning in.

“I don’t know what else you could want,” the Spurs’ Brent Barry said. “Maybe the Hooters girls doing some halftime show.”

There’s even the feel-good story of Piston forward Rasheed Wallace, who really wants people to tune into this series. Right, Rasheed?

“It don’t matter to me,” Wallace said. “I know we’re here to play. I don’t care what none of y’all cats think.”

OK, scratch that last thought.

There was much more eagerness for last year’s matchup, even though the consensus prediction (including this one) was that the Lakers would wipe out the Pistons.

It turned out to be a lopsided series, but in Detroit’s favor. And even though this series presents two apparently evenly matched teams, the Pistons think they’re in for a tougher challenge.

“The Lakers had some great individual talents, of course,” Billups said. “But they weren’t a team, they weren’t really united. We knew that. We knew we could attack that. But the Spurs, they’re a team, in every essence, just like we are.

“Because of that, they present a whole different challenge than the Lakers did, because we know that they’re out there pulling for one another; the guy with the ball is trying to make a play for the next guy. We didn’t have that [belief] with the Lakers that they were trying to do that.”

The Spurs can defend just as well as the Pistons, and they can score like the Phoenix Suns.

That’s why the Spurs will win this series in six -- which will probably be the rating as well.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande go to latimes.com/adande.