Spurs Don’t Give Off a Championship Vibe

It’s not that the Detroit Pistons won Game 4 and it’s not that the San Antonio Spurs lost, it’s how completely helpless the Spurs looked in the process.

And it’s not that the Pistons reached the century mark in their 102-71 victory at the Palace of Auburn Hills Thursday, it’s that Darko Milicic scored their 100th point.

It was that kind of game. Un-close. Two-minutes-of-Darko-time-un-close.

For the Spurs, their performance in the past two games is unacceptable. I’ve never seen a championship-caliber team fall apart so completely in its first two Finals road games. They bear no resemblance to the players who dominated the first two games in San Antonio by a total of 36 points. They still can win rings this year, but after this they would have a little less luster. A great championship team shouldn’t be so completely dependent on home-court advantage.

So although the Spurs didn’t completely lose the edge Thursday -- the series is tied 2-2, and two of the possible three remaining games would be in San Antonio -- they’re losing a shot at putting themselves among the elite champions.

This is more fodder for barber-shop conversation than the historical ledger. After all there aren’t different categories for the 58 champions listed on Page 6 of the Finals record book. But you don’t look at the Houston Rockets of 1994 and 1995 the same way you look at the Chicago Bulls champions that preceded and followed them.

The Spurs already came up short in the legacy department. Not counting the still-in-progress Pistons, the Spurs of 1999 and 2003 are the only champions since 1986 not to successfully defend their title at least once.

These two games in Detroit have been about the Pistons reclaiming their identity. The Spurs turned into an unfamiliar group of strangers.

The Spurs are out of their comfort zone. They left the referee-whining to the Pistons in the first two games, but Thursday Coach Gregg Popovich got red-faced and received a technical foul in the first quarter. Manu Ginobili griped to the refs after committing a turnover. Tim Duncan, who normally displays the emotional range of a British sentry, was visibly frustrated after missing an open jumper.

Meanwhile, the Pistons have regained the swagger they showed against the Lakers in the Finals last year.

“I feel the same energy,” Chauncey Billups said. “I feel the same momentum. We’re playing against a better team, though.”

And that’s what makes this so astonishing. The Lakers were a fractured group by the time they arrived in Detroit last year. The Spurs were supposed to present a more unified front.

Remember how it seemed as if the Pistons were in control the entire time as they became the first team to win the middle three games on their home court since the 2-3-2 format was adopted in 1985? Well, the Pistons’ margin of victory for the first two games played here, 48 points, is more than their total for the three Finals games at the Palace last year (41 points).

Detroit’s defense was back at its energetic best, shutting off access to the lane for Ginobili and Tony Parker and rotating to contest the outside shots.

The Spurs turned the ball over seven times in the first quarter, establishing the tone for a night in which they would commit 17 turnovers to the Pistons’ four (an NBA Finals-record low).

It’s very unbecoming for a squad on which five of the top six players have championship experience.

“They were physical again and they got us on our heels again,” Popovich said. “We reacted very poorly to it and you see the result.”

You could fault Popovich for failing to make adjustments after Detroit’s 96-79 win in Game 3, but it doesn’t even get to that point.

“I don’t think these games are about Xs and O’s,” said Ginobili, whose next-superstar campaign is on hold right now. “The determination they showed, the aggressiveness is why they won.”

And for the second consecutive game, Duncan was powerless to affect the outcome.

One superstar trademark is avoiding two bad games in a row, especially in the playoffs. Duncan’s five-for-17 shooting in Game 4 came on the heels of a five-for-15 night in Game 3.

Duncan is supposed to be one of the biggest advantages the Spurs have. The Pistons don’t have a player like him, a place where they can just dump the ball and wind up with a high-percentage shot without dribble penetration or a sequence of passes. It took the Spurs a while to realize that in the first game, but once they got the ball to Duncan on the blocks they regained their bearing.

“I can think of about five shots that I should have made,” Duncan said. “Not that that changes the game that drastically, but at the same time, it’s a momentum-swinger. It’s time to hit shots and they had an opportunity to run, so I can put that on myself.”

The Spurs can still salvage this series, if not their status. If they win the Finals without winning on the road, they would join the 1955 Syracuse Nationals as the only teams to do so.

Guess that’s better than becoming the third team to blow a 2-0 lead in the Finals.