For five years now, through three Lakers championships and two by the Spurs, we’ve been treating the NBA Finals as a coronation instead of a competition. It’s no different this year.

Los Angeles, with four hall of famers on the starting five and half of Hollywood sitting courtside, can’t lose.

That’s the smart way to look at this thing. The Lakers have overcome themselves, patched up their differences, told Phil Jackson what to do with his triangle offense, hiked up their shorts, and again are taking care of business. And no team from Detroit whose idea of a good offensive night is shooting better than 35 percent and scoring more than 75 points is going to stop them.

Which is why I’ll take the low road on this one and say the Pistons can beat these guys.

Hey, you’re thinking, isn’t this the guy who said the Pistons had better watch out for the Nets and then compounded his error by confidently predicting a Pacers’ win in the east finals? Didn’t he also have the Yankees over the Marlins and the Panthers over the Patriots? And now he’s saying the Pistons — the team whose chances he wouldn’t give a scab for a week ago — are going to beat the L.A. KobeShaqs?

I’ll answer those questions in order: Yes, yes, yes, and not exactly.

Notice that I didn’t say the Pistons will win. I said they can win, which is what I said about the Panthers in the Super Bowl. Call that hedging if you will, because that’s what it is. Even I’m not a big enough fool to say flat out the Lakers will lose. But I’m also not naïve enough to think they can’t lose.

It’s been a long time since the NBA's Eastern Conference has produced a team with a legitimate shot at beating whomever the West brings. It wasn’t the Nets the past two years or the 76ers before them or the Pacers before them or the Knicks before them. It was the Chicago Jordans, who wrapped up their second run of three straight titles in 1998.

But the Pistons are different than the last five eastern pretenders. They play defense better than just about anyone has ever played it. They’re big up front. They’re fast and athletic. They block a lot of shots and pull down a lot of rebounds. Okay, other than Richard Hamilton, they can’t shoot a lick and their offense is uglier than a bucket of dead toads, but that hasn’t stopped them so far. And when they’ve had to, they’ve scored enough to win.

The can do it against even the Lakers, because any team that has their size and quickness and athleticism and willingness to play hard for 48 minutes can do anything. After three rounds of playoffs, after a Game 7 whupping of the Nets and a Game 6 comeback against the Pacers, I finally see that.

The Pacers and the Nets aren’t the Lakers. But the Lakers are hardly the best L.A. team we’ve ever seen. What makes them good also makes them vulnerable — experience can be exposed as age, super confidence easily becomes cockiness, and their self-imposed playoff togetherness can explode into their accustomed dissension at the first hint of adversity.

They open on their home court, the Staples Center. And, with a week to rest, they’ll come out for Game 1 fresh and full of themselves. And the Pistons, making their first trip since the Chuck Daly era to the finals, will be tighter than the lid on a pickle jar and get waxed like a new Mercedes in that first game.

That, at least, is the ideal scenario for an upset for the ages. Losing big in Game 1 is the best thing that can happen to the Pistons. It will convince the Lakers that they don’t have to work to win Shaq and Kobe’s fourth gold basketball, that the Pistons are like every other team that’s come out of the East — strictly minor league.

It will also light a fire under the Pistons, the same the sort that propelled them to superhuman efforts in Game 7 against the Nets and Games 2 and 6 against the Pacers.

The Lakers, who are used to having no competition but themselves, never need much of an excuse to give less than their full effort. And an easy win in Game 1 could get them feeling smug enough to figure they can take Game 2 off and still win. They did it in the conference finals against the T-Wolves. After winning Game 1 on Minnesota’s home court, they hardly bothered to put in an appearance in Game 2. Their goal was to win one of the first two on the road, and when they did that, they took the rest of the trip off.

And that’s what the Pistons need — an overconfident Lakers’ team and a heavy dose of embarrassment to wake up their own work ethic. It can easily add up to a Game 2 win in L.A. and momentum coming home to Detroit. It’s not beyond them.

The Pistons have proved that. They didn’t just beat the Nets in a Game 7, they humiliated them. They overcame one of the worst shooting performances ever seen in a playoff game and an early 14-point deficit to come back and close out the Pacers in six.

Time and again, when the Pistons have needed a big performance, they’ve delivered. When they’ve needed a big play — think Tayshaun Prince blocking Reggie Miller — someone’s produced it.

Okay, the Lakers can say the same. There was Derek Fisher ripping the hearts out of the Spurs in Game 2, and Kareem Rush filling it up from three-point range to help close out the Garnetts.

But the Pistons have youth on their side, and that counts in a seven-game series that doesn’t have five-day rests between games. They’ve got better legs and better endurance and can wear teams down. Even Shaq gets tired when you keep throwing seven-footers who can play a little at him.

And as young and strong and fast as Kobe is, if he has to chase Rip Hamilton around, by the fourth quarter, Kobe’s going to be the one gasping and looking for a break, not Hamilton. And the Pistons can put Prince on Kobe and give Hamilton a break on defense. The Lakers have no one but Kobe who has a chance of keeping up with Hamilton.

Karl Malone still has more muscle than the after-work crowd at the local Gold’s Gym, but Rasheed Wallace is too quick and athletic for Malone to guard. Gary Payton and/or Derek Fisher on Chauncy Billups is a wash.

So it’s going to rest on Shaquille O’Neal’s shoulders. As it is in every series, he’s the one guy who can’t be matched. The Pistons will hack him and put him on the line, and with their assortment of big men, they have a lot of fouls to give. They can’t stop him, but they can make him work harder than he wants to.

They can also frustrate him, swat the ball away from him, make Kobe or Payton forget to pass the ball to him and restore disharmony to the Laker locker room. And then, the Pistons can win this thing.

I’m not saying they will win, just that they can. That’s more than I could have said the last five years. And it’s reason enough to watch this Final more closely than any in a long, long time.

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