It's good and groovy if you want to say Ben Wallace defended Shaquille O'Neal, one-on-one, mano-a-supermano, well enough for the Detroit Pistons to beat the Los Angeles Lakers for the title last year and should be just as successful this year against O'Neal and the Miami Heat.

That's fine. You can say that. But let's be serious.

By any rational measure, O'Neal destroyed Wallace in the NBA Finals last June. No? How's an average of 26.6 points, 10.8 rebounds and 63 percent shooting by Shaq sound?

Like good defense by Wallace? Or does it merely constitute good defense for everyone playing the series result?

Anyone watching that series knew what they read about later: It wasn't basketball that got Shaq's Lakers beat by the Pistons. It was ego. It was selfishness. It was Kobe not throwing the ball to Shaq in the fourth quarter, evidently upset that Shaq had won three straight MVP awards in the Finals. He wanted one himself. He still wants one.

So let's be clear on the upcoming Heat-Pistons series. If Shaq is healthy — if he's healthy enough to be a dominant force — the Heat has the best inside player in the game in Shaq and one of the best perimeter players in Dwyane Wade.

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That's a formula only San Antonio can match in personnel or Phoenix could match not so much with players but a frantic pace.

And Detroit? If Shaq's healthy, the Heat win the series, hands down.

But that's a 7-foot-1, 325-pound if.

Because if Shaq's game remains as deeply bruised as his thigh has been this past month, it will be the Pistons' series to take. And they will. As they should.

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If that sounds simplistic — with a healthy Shaq, the Heat win; with a hurt Shaq, the Pistons win — that's because NBA basketball is easy to read this time of year. The best talent always wins. Always. It's the most predictable big sport out there.

Have there been any real upsets again this year? The first three teams advancing to the conference finals were clearly superior this season:

Detroit, Miami and San Antonio. Phoenix's frantic style still has to prove its philosophical center holds under playoff pressure, so it's hard to judge them by traditional means.