Most Valuable Team

[1Parker1]

SAN ANTONIO – The fireworks sparked overhead, the music blared and the confetti fell on the court. Not on one player, not on one big, bright star deep in the heart of Texas, but on one team – one together, tenacious, total team.

In a star-driven league, it was a group of contributors who drove to the le. In a sport that celebrates the individual, it was a collection of individuals who celebrated last.

San Antonio Spurs 81, Detroit Pistons 74.

At long last it was over, the Spurs gritting out a NBA championship in seven gritty games.

"Perseverance," said Tim Duncan, the Finals MVP who finished with 25 points and 11 rebounds. "We just stuck with it. We just kept on pushing. We just kept on fighting."

ADVERTISEMENT


Game 7 was a microcosm of this entire series – back and forth, forth and back. With every Spurs' run, the Pistons ran back. With every Detroit surge, San Antonio surged back. And mostly it was won by the Spurs because of big plays by multiple players, guys picking one another up when someone eventually fell down.

Duncan deserved to win MVP for his critic-answering play. But so did a handful of others in silver and black.

This was Bruce Bowen completely stuffing Chauncey Billups (3-of-8 shooting) the way he had stuffed Richard Hamilton earlier in the series.

This was Tony Parker stepping up defensively on Hamilton (6-of-18 shooting) allowing the Bowen switch on Billups to work.

This was Duncan shaking off a nightmare offensive start to the game and a growing sense of dread to explode in the third quarter (nine points in a 2:09 stretch).

This was Robert Horry delivering 15 momentum-swinging points, just the way he carried the Spurs to a Game 5 victory with a legendary performance.

This was Manu Ginobili slashing and dashing to the rim for 23 points, reminiscent of his play in staking the Spurs to a critical 2-0 series lead.

It was a group of guys up against summer, up against a classic collapse, up against the dangerous defending champions growing together and growing tougher when it mattered most.

"Kid in the candy store," cooed Bowen in celebration. "Party, party, candy. This is a beautiful moment."

Make no mistake, San Antonio was in trouble in this game. The Spurs trailed by nine points in the second half, and Duncan was doing plenty of little things but not the big one the Spurs needed most – scoring.

At one point, he was 4-of-14 from the floor and had gone scoreless for nearly 14 minutes – "I felt the game was going bad for me," Duncan said. But then his chief harassers, Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess, both hit the bench with four fouls, and Duncan made an old-fashioned three-point play and everything changed.

"I got one to fall in and two to fall in and things started happening," Duncan said. "Then I was able to draw some double teams and got some guys some open shots.

"The whole game was about perseverance, sticking to it, keeping it going," he continued. "Things not going well? Don't really care and keep going."

That's the Spurs, though. They may not fit the NBA's classic star-gazing, high-entertainment act that the Nielsen people covet. They may come from a small market. But they now have captured three les in seven years (two in the last three) and have a young core in place to be in contention for a long time.

"We can play better," Duncan said, "but we have years to do that."

Perhaps the greatest thing about the Spurs is that the MVP wasn't sure he deserved to be MVP and spent much of the postgame complimenting his teammates. In return, all of those guys praised Duncan.

"Timmy is the leader of our team. He just carried us tonight," Parker said.

But at times, the Spurs all did some carrying. And every bit of it was needed to drive a stake through the heart of the Pistons, who were the most resilient of champions. Detroit could have faded in these playoffs any number of times, but it took a tie game into the fourth quarter.

That's when San Antonio took control of the game, the series and the championship. Four different players scored, five different players grabbed rebounds and everyone kept feeding the white-hot Ginobili, who scored 11 points in the fourth and closed it out like a baseball reliever.

It wasn't just Tim Duncan. It wasn't just one player. It wasn't just one thing. It was a thing of beauty even the Pistons could appreciate.

"I recognize the fact that another team deserved it," Pistons coach Larry Brown said.

A team did.

The best team.


http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slu...yhoo&type=lgns

[1Parker1]

SAN ANTONIO – Larry Brown always could count on certain things happening when his Detroit Pistons stepped on the court.

Ben Wallace crashing the boards was one. Richard Hamilton getting good looks off his patented curl cuts was another. But the surest thing of all was Chauncey Billups taking and making big shots.

But Mr. Big Shot couldn't even take aim when his team needed him most in the fourth quarter. It wasn't his fault. A certain member of the NBA's all-defensive team wouldn't even let him take off the safety.

When the San Antonio Spurs switched Bruce Bowen from Hamilton to Billups, Detroit lost its designated big-game shooter – the one Piston who could put the entire team on his back and carry it to victory.

Billups took just three shots in that fateful fourth quarter and attempted only eight total in scoring a meager 13 points – nearly nine fewer than his Finals average going into Thursday's Game 7 – in Detroit's 81-74 defeat at the SBC Center.

ADVERTISEMENT


Bowen acted like a defensive assassin, lining up Billups in his crosshairs to effectively take the 2004 Finals MVP out of the outcome.

"My main focus was, 'Hey, I don't want Chauncey to get hot right now,' " Bowen said. "Chauncey is able to take over the game at any given moment."

In his career-saving tenure with the Pistons, time and again, Billups demonstrated his ability to be the hero. In Detroit's season-saving Game 6 victory on Tuesday, he helped put San Antonio's plans for a downtown parade on hold by burying two of his five three-pointers in an eight-point third quarter.

Late in the game on Thursday, scoring was almost not an option for Billups, not with Bowen in his face. All Billups could do was distribute the ball, not shoot it.

To hear it from Billups, though, Bowen wasn't as much of a factor as his foul trouble.

"He did a good job, but it wasn't really him by himself," Billups said. "They played me with a lot of guys – trap me a lot on pick-and-rolls. The biggest thing was those two fouls in the first six minutes. Keeping me out of the flow of the game was the biggest thing.

"I came out aggressive but not to really score. I wanted to get us going," Billups added. "In the process of that, I picked up two little touch fouls. It took all of my aggressiveness away."

Billups' backcourt mate, Hamilton, failed to take advantage of his freedom from Bowen, who had hounded him into uncharacteristic 39.4-percent shooting the first six games. Parker proved to be just as much of a nuisance, as Hamilton followed his breakout 23-point effort on Tuesday with 15 points on only 6-of-18 shooting.

Hamilton went scoreless in the fourth quarter until the final 10.7 seconds when the game already had been decided, tacking on three insignificant points.

"It was different because Tony is not going to grab and hold as much as Bruce does," Hamilton said. "He's pretty much going to try to use his speed and chase me around screens and things like that. … You've got to give a lot of credit to the Spurs. They did a great job tonight."

After watching the Pistons make eight three-pointers and shoot 46.8 percent in Game 6, San Antonio limited Detroit to just 41.9-percent shooting in Game 7 – only 36.8 percent in the fourth quarter.

The play that summed up the total lockdown of the Pistons' offense came with 55.9 seconds left and Detroit trailing 73-68. Out of a timeout, Billups spotted up to let a three-pointer fly, but Bowen swatted the ball with an emphatic rejection that had the 18,797 fans roaring.

"I was just trying to make sure I stayed up with him," Bowen said. "With my length, sometimes it creates problems for guys."

"It was an ugly, choppy game all night," Billups said. "Both teams were playing great defense and playing very hard. Neither team allowed the other to really get it going. We had a lot of guys in foul trouble all night. It was an ugly game, period. But great teams win ugly games."

Because of Bowen and Parker, there was nothing pretty about the Pistons' offense.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slu...yhoo&type=lgns