Rasheed Wallace had predicted victory in Game 4 and was wrong. He tried it again for Game 5 and was wrong again. But his overall prediction that there wasn’t any way the Pistons were going to lose was spot on.

Twelve times this Pistons team has faced a Game 7 in the playoffs and only once have they failed to convert, and that was on the road in San Antonio in last year’s NBA Finals. You don’t keep winning games like that on luck.

The Pistons have been the best pure team in the game for most of three years. They are on a mission to reclaim the NBA championship, and if they can get their second in three years, there’s no choice but to give them credit for being one of the great teams.

The way they clamped down on the Cavs was a thing of beauty and a lesson in how team defense is played. It was almost too easy, leaving you wonder why it took so long to win the series.

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The fact that it did take so long was a reminder of how much effort it takes to play that kind of team defense. Only when they absolutely had to have that kind of effort could the Pistons bring themselves to summon it up, only when they couldn’t win easy did they resort to winning hard.

You have to think that the Heat series is going to be more of the same. Miami is a team that can crush an opponent, but it’s also a team that can be crushed. Ultimately, it’s going to be a battle not of superstars, but of will. The team that commits to the effort and the pain is the one that will win.

Few teams are better than Detroit at making that commitment when it has to. That’s how it got this far. That’s why it deserves to be where it is. That’s why this series, and not the sexier match, is the best the NBA East has to offer.