Game 2 Counts for Something

Thank you, Spurs, for restoring that one element that’s been missing in these NBA Finals: basketball.

It has been easy to forget just how enjoyable the game can be in this series, with a dreadful Game 1 sandwiched between the elaborate sideshows and the threat of a lockout next month. It was easy to forget there were any games at all during the two days off to accommodate ABC’s scheduling wishes.

Then Game 2 finally arrived, and the San Antonio Spurs reminded us why their best efforts are the best the NBA has to offer as they beat the Detroit Pistons, 97-76.

We all know the Phoenix Suns provide the most entertaining offense. But they aren’t capable of the kind of effort on defense that limited the Pistons to 36% shooting and 19 points in the first quarter, when this game essentially was decided.

In three trips to the Finals the Spurs still haven’t allowed an opponent to score 90 points, a string that reached 13 games Sunday night.

The Spurs stand as the model franchise right now. Their front office is like a business seminar, and for stretches, such as the first half of Game 2, the team is like a basketball clinic.

Sunday it was Manu Ginobili, the scoring star of Game 1, becoming a playmaker and setting the tone with seven assists and still managing to fall into 27 points.

It was their star player, Tim Duncan, retreating to the background to check for -- ho-hum -- just another double-double with 18 points and 11 rebounds.

It was Bruce Bowen, harassing Richard Hamilton into a five-for-15 shooting night and still having enough left in his legs to knock down four three-pointers and score 15 points.

It was the sneaky play of Robert Horry, catching the Pistons napping three times to get backcourt steals.

The Spurs had 23 assists on their 29 baskets.

Even the losing coach, Larry Brown, had to say, “They were beautiful to watch, in terms of their execution.”

It was much needed after a gloomy pregame when Commissioner David Stern and Deputy Commissioner Russ Granik spent 45 minutes on the pessimistic state of negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement.

The two sides still can’t reach an accord, they don’t have any meetings scheduled and if no deal’s in place by July 1 there will be a lockout.

“We don’t have a lot of runway left,” Stern said.

The union essentially wants to keep the current deal in place. After the players dropped to the floor and rolled over on their backs in the last labor war, I don’t blame them for not wanting to make any more concessions. But, if Stern’s side is to be believed, this would simply be a recognition of the new economic reality.

On the dollar side, the league’s latest offer is not too much of a dropoff: the players still get 57% of the revenue and the maximum contract length drops from seven years to six (five guaranteed), according to Stern.

The league has compromised on the much-debated minimum entry age, dropping its demand from 20 years to 19.

Granik said the union won’t agree on a drug-testing policy. They players couldn’t possibly blow up the whole golden goose just for the freedom to blaze a few joints, could they?

There are other details, but there’s nothing that should stand in the way of two intelligent sides making a compromise and avoiding a league meltdown.

Stern seemed glum. He zipped through his usual we-have-two-great-teams-here-the-game’s-going-global-aren’t-things-gr eat portion of his annual speech without any conviction.

He didn’t make any glib remarks and refrained from talking tough, except to say that if the union lets this go to a lockout it would be “a mistake of epic proportions.”

“I remain disbelieving here, actually,” Stern said. “Because whatever the public would think of us, the fact that we could explain it is not going to change the view that in a time when the world seems to be pretty much on fire, and people are obsessed with things like the sanctity of Social Security and the development of healthcare and you keep naming it, that we couldn’t sit down and come up with a way to divide up the $3 billion a year that we are going to generate ... it is incomprehensible and in some ways inexplicable.”

Stern left out the public’s concern with high gas prices and the state of Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey’s marriage, but he was on the right track.

All of the labor talk didn’t leave any time to discuss another league flaw: It’s need for supplementary entertainment. Tipoff for Game 1 was pushed back to almost 9:30 p.m. Eastern time to accommodate a musical performance by Will Smith and an elaborate introduction that had the players stepping around giant replicas of the Larry O’Brien trophy.

Spur Coach Gregg Popovich “told me he had about four guys almost trip over cords,” Brown said. “We had a couple guys almost stumble off the platform, and somebody got mad at me because I was in the way of a cable.”

It was the last thing the Spurs needed after an eight-day layoff, and the broken rhythm showed when they fell behind, 17-4, at the start of Game 1.

As it turns out, the pregame ceremonies have presented more of a challenge than the Pistons.

From midway through the first quarter of Game 1 through the first half of Game 2, the Spurs outscored Detroit, 138-94.

Yes, things are getting a little desperate for the Pistons.

“We can’t take it one game at a time now,” Chauncey Billups said. “We’ve got to play quarters.”

Whoa, I know it’s bad, but this is no time for drinking games.

“We’ve got to be very focused on short spans, quarters,” he said.

Oh.

The Spurs, meanwhile, might want to start putting the champagne on ice.

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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.