Mike Celizic

Detroit hasn’t won the East, not yet, but you have to like their chances. And, as you’ll surely read or here soon enough, if you haven’t already, the NBA suits in New York have to be tearing their hair out at the prospects of a finals between the lunch-bucket Pistons and the duller-than-plastic-steak-knives Spurs.

They’ll take the Spurs, not least because it doesn’t look as if they have a lot of choice. But at Least San Antonio has Tim Duncan, one of the most admired players the league has ever had, and Manu Ginobili, the Argentinian answer to Pete Maravich.

It’s the Pistons who have to be galling folks back at the home office. Yes, they’re the defending champions, and fine and deserving champs they are. But the NBA built its marketing campaign on individual stars, and the Pistons don’t have people like that.

All the Pistons are is a team — you know, one of those things in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and it’s all for one and one for all. Who wants that when you could be having Shaquille O’Neal in the finals; when you could have Dwyane Wade?

Detroit, in case the news hasn’t reached you, isn’t Hollywood. Nor is it the Big Apple or the Windy City or the Hub or the City of Brotherly Love or South Beach. It’s a rusting hulk that shares a media market with Canada; Buffalo without the glitter.

It is, the experts are sure to tell you, a ratings nightmare.

And that is exactly what’s wrong with the NBA. Instead of lamenting the possible departure of Shaq and Dwyane, we ought to be getting ready to celebrate as remarkable a team as the NBA has seen in a long time.

If you haven’t watched them yet, you owe it to yourself to turn off the phone, lay in a supply of your favorite beverages and munchies, and sit down to take in a game. And not just the first and fourth quarters, but the whole game.

Forget about watching it with a crowd. Bolt the door and hunker down, just you and the tube or the flat panel and the Pistons and the Heat. Watch the way Detroit plays the game, now they help on defense and switch and get in the other guys’ faces and never give anyone an inch to breath.

Watch them on offense, as balanced an unselfish a team as you’ll ever see. Richard Hamilton is a great shooter, and on a lot of teams, the coach would designate him the star, run the offense through him, and watch his scoring average climb to the top of the charts.

He’d be a megastar if he got into a situation like that, the re-incarnation of Reggie Miller, but with some defense thrown in.

With the Pistons, he doesn’t average even 20 points — 18.7 was it for the season. That’s high on the team, but it’s not his average that’s telling, but the averages of his teammates.