Who Has Upper Hand?

SAN ANTONIO — If you wanted to know why the Detroit Pistons have the advantage heading into Game 7 of the NBA Finals, you didn’t even need to watch

Game 6.

You could have learned the whole story by spending the last two days in the room at the SBC Center where they hold news conferences.

What’s at stake? About 7 p.m. Central time Tuesday, the golden Larry O’Brien championship trophy and the gold-and-silver Finals most-valuable-player trophy sat on a table, polished and ready for pictures. If the San Antonio Spurs had won that night they could have claimed the big gold ball, and a big game by Tim Duncan or Manu Ginobili would have earned him the smaller MVP award.

What happened? Four hours later, after a 95-86 victory by the Pistons, Detroit’s Rasheed Wallace, a wrestling championship belt slung over his shoulder, climbed aboard the platform behind that table, grabbed a stats sheet, crumpled it and tossed it aside.

That’s the attitude that has brought the Pistons to the brink of their second consecutive championship. They don’t care about the numbers; they aren’t interested in the past.

History stood in their way like an imposing front line. They had lost 10 consecutive games in San Antonio. The Spurs had dropped only five games here all season. Since the NBA went to the 2-3-2 Finals format in 1985, no team had fallen behind 3-2 and come back to win the last two games on the road, which was the challenge the Pistons faced after an overtime loss in Game 5.

No road team has won a Finals Game 7 since the Washington Bullets beat the Seattle SuperSonics in 1978.

No team has ever won two Game 7s on the road in the same postseason; the Pistons had to win a Game 7 in Miami just to get here.

“We hear all that stuff, but we don’t pay attention to it,” Piston guard Lindsey Hunter said. “We feel like all those stats and stuff don’t mean anything. It all comes down to what you do between those lines. And that’s how we play. People start throwing numbers at us: ‘This team hasn’t done this or no team has done that.’ We don’t care about that.”

Their attitude, as Wallace put it: “Just go out there and hoop.”

What’s next? Well, the forecast calls for increasing tightness for the Spurs. It wasn’t a good sign when Duncan took his turn in the news conference room Wednesday and was asked to reflect on what went wrong in the fourth quarter of Game 6.

Duncan used the words “antsy” and “jittery” to describe his team’s play.

That’s not what you want to hear from your superstar this time of year. And if the Spurs felt that way in Game 6, when they had a loss to spare, how will they be with no margin for error?

Spur Coach Gregg Popovich said all the right things, but it was obvious he had no idea what to expect from his team. In the last two fourth quarters, Duncan is four for 13 from the free-throw line, Manu Ginobili is three for 12 from the field, Tony Parker has scored three points.

Most of the Spurs’ key players, including Duncan, Ginobili and Parker, haven’t played in a Game 7. The franchise hasn’t gone the distance in a series since 1990, when the Spurs lost to Portland in the conference semifinals.

Robert Horry has been to Game 7, of course. He has done everything in the playoffs except lose in the Finals, where he’s 5-0 with the Lakers and Houston Rockets.

He looked like his usual relaxed self Wednesday. But he also looked tired.

If any team should be fatigued, it ought to be the Pistons. The defending champions have played more playoff games than anyone over the last two years, and tonight’s game will be their 25th postseason game of 2005, tying the 1994 New York Knicks for the most in one year.

But they looked the same Wednesday as they did before Game 1. Buoyant even.

Because there’s one statistical trend that’s very applicable to them: They have won five consecutive games when facing elimination over the last two seasons.

Down 3-2 to the New Jersey Nets in the 2003 Eastern Conference finals.

Down 3-2 to the Heat this year.

And down 3-2 here Tuesday.

“When we’re out there, we don’t think about it like, ‘Oh, it’s the last game, this might our last game’ ” Rasheed Wallace said. “No. We just play.”

Nothing has fazed them. They had the stigma of the nasty brawl that spilled into the stands at the Palace of Auburn Hills in November. Their coach needed a health-related sabbatical during the season, has an appointment at the Mayo Clinic after the series and could be gone. Wallace left Horry alone for the game-deciding three-point basket in Game 5 -- the basketball equivalent of grooving a belt-high fastball to Barry Bonds in the bottom of the ninth in the World Series -- and none of his teammates pointed fingers at him.

Coach Larry Brown even took the time to tell his players he loved them during a fourth-quarter timeout Tuesday -- and they all laughed.

“That ... was hilarious,” Wallace said. “I mean, that’s just him. We thought he was going to say something like, ‘Oh, I just saved money by switching to Geico.’ ”

The Pistons’ worst attribute is the way they wail about the officiating during games. Even that shouldn’t be a factor tonight. When Wallace heard the crew for Game 7 would be Dick Bavetta, Joe Crawford and Ed T. Rush, he nodded his approval.

Why would you rather be the Pistons than the Spurs right now? The Spurs’ big man is fielding questions about his ability to deliver in crunch time. There’s only one burning question about the Pistons’ big man, Ben Wallace: Will he braid his hair, or will he set free the ‘Fro?

J.A. Adande can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Adande go to latimes.com/adande.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Game 7s

Tonight’s Detroit-San Antonio matchup marks the 16th Game 7 in NBA Finals history. The home team has won 12 of the previous 15.

*--* Year Teams 1994 Houston (H) def. New York, 90-84 1988 Lakers (H) def. Detroit, 108-105 1984 Boston (H) def. Lakers, 111-102 1978 Washington (A) def. Seattle, 105-99 1974 Boston (A) def. Milwaukee, 102-87 1970 New York (H) def. Lakers, 113-99 1969 Boston (A) def. Lakers, 108-106 1966 Boston (H) def. Lakers, 95-93 1962 Boston (H) def. Lakers, 110-107* 1960 Boston (H) def. St. Louis, 122-103 1957 Boston (H) def. St. Louis, 125-123** 1955 Syracuse (H) def. Fort Wayne, 92-91 1954 Minneapolis (H) def. Syracuse, 87-80 1952 Minneapolis (H) def. New York, 82-65 1951 Rochester (H) def. New York, 79-75

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* overtime; ** double overtime

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GAME 7 TONIGHT

Detroit at San Antonio

6 PDT, Channel 7

Mark Heisler on Big Finish, D7

TOUGH ROAD

Road teams are 3-12 in Game 7 of NBA Finals. The winners:

* 1978: Washington def. Seattle.

* 1974: Boston def. Milwaukee.

* 1969: Boston def. Lakers.