A Spur Thing

To the San Antonio Spurs, or whomever Robert Horry is playing for now, go the spoils.

Like Dracula, you have to drive a stake through the Detroit Pistons’ heart, but the Spurs finally did Thursday night. Tim Duncan, playing as if his reputation depended on it -- which it did -- got 25 points the hard way, on 27 shots, but he led the Spurs to an 81-74 victory in Game 7 and the NBA championship.

It was the Spurs’ third title since 1999, tying them with the Lakers for hegemony of the post-Chicago Bulls era. Duncan, getting the first bad press of his career after shaky performances in Games 3 through 6, wound up as the Finals most valuable player for the third time, to go with his two regular-season MVPs.

“Well, you know, when you call plays, it always works better when he’s out there,” Coach Gregg Popovich said. “He was incredible, and he was the force that got it done.”

Of course, the balance of power, in the series and the millennium, was Horry, a reserve forward, who scored 15 points and made one more big three-point shot in an 8-2 burst early in the fourth quarter, breaking a 59-59 tie, as the Spurs went ahead to stay.

Without Horry’s dramatic shot in Game 4 of the 2002 West finals against Sacramento, the Lakers might not have won their third title in a row. Without his dramatic shot in Game 5 of this series, the Spurs might not have won this one.

Appropriately enough in this defense-minded series, it was a defensive star who turned this game around. That was the Spurs’ Bruce Bowen, who came off Richard Hamilton in the second half Thursday night and went on Chauncey Billups.

Billups, whom the Pistons call Mr. Big Shot, got off only five shots of any kind in the second half.

The Game 7, the NBA’s first in 11 seasons, capped a hard-fought series. Nevertheless, the coaches, old friends -- Popovich came to the NBA as Larry Brown’s assistant here -- socialized throughout, going out to dinner several times, including Wednesday.

“Last night was real special for both of us,” Popovich said before the game, “so we spent time together and talked very little about basketball, which is awkward because that’s all we ever do.

“We haven’t talked much about why we’re on the planet or what our fate might be upon death and what happens to an individual at that point. It’s always napkins and salt shakers and all of the staff that doesn’t matter.”

The media had already begun gnawing on Duncan’s reputation after tepid performances in Games 3 and 4. However, when he started bricking free throws and then everything that came out of his hands in Game 5, and struggled at the free-throw line again in the Game 6 loss, he was teed up and ready to be whacked down the fairway.

So, it wasn’t good news for the Spurs when Ben Wallace outscored Duncan, 12-8, in the first half.

Then the Pistons went on a 9-1 run to start the third period, taking a 48-39 start. At that point, Duncan had taken 13 shots and missed 10.

Nevertheless, Duncan was wearing the Pistons down. Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess, who were taking turns guarding Duncan, were all in foul trouble. When Rasheed, the most troublesome defender of the three, went to the bench with his fourth foul in the third period, Duncan finally began warming up.

“I felt like the game was going bad, yeah, I did feel that,” Duncan said. “But it was just about pushing through it and just the perseverance.

“Those guys, my teammates, just kept continuing to throw the ball in and to feed me. They were more confident in me than I was, and that is so appreciated.”

Trailing by nine, the Spurs went on a 7-0 run to get back in and the Pistons, who hung tough through everything this season -- a melee against the Indiana Pacers at the Palace, speculation about their coach leaving to coach the New York Knicks, more speculation about their coach leaving to become president of the Cleveland Cavaliers -- finally began to fade.

The 6-foot-5, 200-pound Bowen had previously thrown kinks into the games of Carmelo Anthony, Ray Allen and Shawn Marion in this postseason, before holding Hamilton to 14.8 points and 38% from the floor in the first five games of the Finals.

However, if the lighter, quicker Hamilton was a harder cover, taking Bowen through myriad screens each possession, the 6-4, 200-pound Billups was more Bowen’s size.

“My main focus was, hey, I don’t want Chauncey to get hot right now,” Bowen said. “Chauncey, he’s able to take over the game at any given moment and that last game, he had five threes, that was four too many.”

With their nucleus of Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, the Spurs might just be getting started. Meanwhile, the dethroned champion Pistons will now wait to see whether Brown keeps coaching, and, if so, if he keeps coaching them.

Brown and Popovich hugged before the game. When it was over, they embraced again.

“He was thanking me,” Brown said. “I don’t know what he was doing. I was just telling him how proud I was of him and his team.”

It wasn’t your usual NBA Finals. For one thing, it was close. Someone had to win and did, barely.