"A Battle of Heavyweights": Michael Wilbon on Mavs-Pistons

[Stranger]

Link to Washington Post article

A Battle of Heavyweights

By Michael Wilbon
Monday, March 19, 2007; Page E04

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- It's precisely this kind of response that will serve the Dallas Mavericks well if they're going to win a championship. Dirk Nowitzki couldn't sleep after Wednesday night's almost traumatic loss to the Phoenix Suns in Dallas. Yet, while the Suns have fallen apart since winning, Dallas answered losing with a pair of victories, including Sunday's on the road against the Pistons.

Folks who had Nowitzki losing the most valuable player award to Steve Nash after the double-overtime classic Wednesday night might want to consider that Nowitzki, playing against the best team in the Eastern Conference, made 9 of 12 shots in the second half and grabbed eight rebounds to lead the Mavericks to a 92-88 victory Sunday in what very likely was a preview of the NBA Finals.

Dallas's recovery was certainly part of the story, but probably less important than the gradual return to glory of the Pistons, who have played most of the season as an afterthought. Sunday, Detroit played without its most important player, Chauncey Billups, who sat out with a strained groin, making the Pistons' ability to play dead-even with Dallas for 95 percent of the game even more impressive.

Nobody loves being on the end of a slight, real or perceived, more than the Detroit Pistons. Billups is on his sixth team and was traded as a rookie. Chris Webber was thought to be NBA road kill just three months ago. Rip Hamilton was shown the door in Washington by Michael Jordan. Rasheed Wallace didn't find happiness until this, his fourth stop.

They love that nobody has much noticed them all season, that they've built the best record in the Eastern Conference, that they're 21-8 with the rejuvenated Webber, who is closer to all-star than finished. The Pistons love that the conversation of the season began with the Suns in Phoenix, worked its way to Texas for an extended stay in Dallas, and recently detoured to San Antonio. The few times a team in the Eastern Conference merited discussion it was Miami, of course, and whether the Heat could survive the long absence of Shaq, then Pat Riley and now Dwyane Wade.

The Pistons won in Dallas earlier in the season and won in Phoenix on Friday night, yet it hardly made news outside of Detroit. And the Pistons love every second of being ignored, of being ranked as low as sixth in the NBA, behind the Mavericks, Suns, Spurs, and probably the Jazz and Rockets. They probably didn't even mind all that much losing to the Mavericks here Sunday because it'll keep the radar from finding the Pistons just that much longer.

Conventional wisdom will try to use Sunday's result as proof that no team in the Eastern Conference has much chance this June in the NBA Finals. But the fact that the Pistons took Dallas to the final shot without Billups says the Pistons can still beat anybody.

"We love it that way," Pistons Coach Flip Saunders said. "It's just the opposite of last year. We love flying under the radar. We can go at our own pace. As a coach, there's no agenda on when you play who you play. You can actually find out a lot more about your team that way."

A year ago, the Pistons were the story the way the Mavericks are now.

Detroit won a franchise-record 64 games in the regular season while trying to regain the 2004 championship it lost to San Antonio in 2005.

"We were more mentally fatigued last year than physically," Saunders said. "When you're in that, every game is like a Super Bowl. And there are only so many Super Bowls you can play in one season. That's the thing about what Dallas and Phoenix are doing."

Saunders believes the Mavericks and Suns have earned every word of praise they've received. But he likes his team's position better. All those discarded Pistons, starting with Wallace, love to play to the theme of "us-against-the-world." Every important person on the Detroit roster, except Tayshaun Prince, has been traded or dumped at some point. And the Pistons are at their best when they feel somebody, anybody, has disrespected them. Wallace, with the biggest smile imaginable on his face, found a reporter before the game (that would be me) and said: "You still picking Miami? You're still with Miami aren't you?"

Well, perhaps not, Rasheed. Things have changed, and rather dramatically at that. Even with Shaq exerting himself in Miami and the Cavaliers winning eight straight, the Pistons are the best team in the Eastern Conference. With the NBA officiating in favor of offense, Webber's scoring, passing and overall court savvy makes these Pistons as formidable as they were two years ago with Ben Wallace anchoring the last defensively dominant team in the league we may see for quite some time. As the Mavericks' Jason Terry said before the game, "Detroit's the team in the east. Miami's creeping up and so is Cleveland. But Detroit's the team."

Of course, the Pistons don't want to hear that kind of talk, not with Billups in street clothes. Teams whose best players are basketball royalty (Michael Jordan, Magic, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas) are just fine playing as front-runners. The Bulls, Lakers, Celtics and Bad Boy Pistons wanted you to chase them. These Pistons, who don't have a franchise player (Webber is too old for that description to fit), need to walk around with a chip on their collective shoulder and freely admit it. "It's tough to carry a chip on you shoulder for 10 months if you also have something to prove," Saunders said. "That's hard."

That's what the Mavericks and Suns are attempting to do now, which is Saunders's point. Yet, the Mavericks don't quite see it that way, not Terry anyway. "I don't think it's a grind for us," he said. "Okay, we took a step back last week losing those games to Golden State and Phoenix. But people aren't robots. The question about us after losing in the Finals and starting 0-4 was mentally, could we get past the disappointment. It was a fair question. And that will be the question again in the playoffs because that's a different season totally. . . . But I feel we are. You can see it in the back-to-backs we play, in tough road games. Last year, the year before, it did feel like a grind."

Terry is right about the question we're all going to have about the Mavericks going into the playoffs. Their inability to close out the Suns Wednesday night in Dallas was eerily reminiscent of their inability to close out Miami after a 2-0 lead in last year's Finals. Nowitzki is probably going to be this year's MVP, and legitimately so. But we don't associate MVPs with missing shots that could win the game, free throws that could have sealed it earlier, and committing fouls and technical fouls that hurt the team in what probably was the most desperately contested game this season. Nowitzki did all that in the double-overtime loss to the Suns.

But on Sunday he followed up a 2-for-8 first-half shooting performance with something that looked like a usual Nowitzki performance and the usual Mavericks result. That Dallas rallied itself after such a huge disappointment Wednesday might just speak to the mental toughness we've all been looking for since last year's NBA Finals.