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		San Antonio-Detroit Game 3 preview By Joe Cronin and Ken Gimblin June 13, 2005

	The Detroit Pistons are back in the confines of The Palace at Auburn Hills and will need the help of the guys who got them this far - Rip Hamilton, Chauncey Billups, Antonio McDyess, and Ben and Rasheed Wallace. The Pistons are down 2-0 at home for a 6 p.m. PDT tipoff Tuesday and if they drop Game 3, you can almost forget about the commissioner's award coming to Detroit, because in order for that to happen at this point, the Pistons have to win games 3, 4, 5, and 6 to make their dreams realized. No one feels that the Pistons are the Boston Red Sox of basketball at this point. Their opponent, the San Antonio Spurs, think the most about defense, and that's what closed off Phoenix in the last series. The Suns weren't able to do anything against the Spurs and that is what they're going to try essentially against Detroit. The Spurs are in for a great game Tuesday night defensively and they're going to go after the Pistons. If the Pistons can shoot with San Antonio pressure, they have a chance. If you were a betting person, you have to see each team winning at their own venue and for Game 7 to be one or the other because its going to take that much strength, it's going to take defense. The reason why these two teams are in the NBA Championship series is because of their defensive prowess. That's how you can tell whose going to go the farthest in the playoffs. Even if you took a look at Miami who had Shaq, the Heat really didn't play five-man defense. Shaq obviously could stop anybody underneath the basket and intimidate the heck out of them. It's going to be to the team who does the best on offense that's going to wind up being on top in the series. There's always a chance you could steal a game. That again would be the way that one or the other team is going to win. That means the Spurs are going to have to play the hardest, shoot the best, but most importantly, they have to out-guard the other team so that you can turn off the other team. Head coaches: Larry Brown of Detroit and Gregg Popovich of San Antonio are the two best coaches in the NBA. Both of them are complete coaches, both of them team offense and defense so their coaching style takes maximum advantage of the players they have. JC & Kenny G's picks: You have to see San Antonio as the favorite in this series if only for that reason because they're a fresher team. San Antonio got a little bit of a break when they mowed down Phoenix because they overwhelmed the Suns. The Suns really didn't know what to do and how to defend San Antonio, so if you can come in and knock a team out of its game, you've got a real good chance of beating them. Now if you look at the first two games of this series, you see a San Antonio team that was able to go after Detroit at the Pistons' own game. That might lead you to believe that the Spurs are the better team, but Detroit's at home and San Antonio is on the road - it's pretty tough to win in somebody else's place. The Schedule and scores: All games are 6PM PDT - denotes if necessary June 9 San Antonio 84 Detroit 69 June 12 San Antonio 97 Detroit 76 June 14 San Antonio @ Detroit June 16 San Antonio @ Detroit June 19 San Antonio @ Detroit June 21 Detroit @ San Antonio* June 23 Detroit @ San Antonio* Joe Cronin and Ken Gimblin will have analysis throughout the finals and Dave Zizmor has your game story from each championship final game all three co-host Sportstalk on 1430 KVVN San Jose and 1110 KLIB Sacramento.