What sells and what wins are as different as snow and sand, as distinct as suburban Detroit and Miami Beach.
The Miami Heat and the Los Angeles Lakers -- pitting the rivals Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant and Pat Riley and Phil Jackson -- play in the featured game at 3pm Eastern. For the undercard, at 12:30pm, the defending champion San Antonio Spurs travel to Auburn Hills, Michigan, to play the Pistons, owners of a league-best 21-3 record.
Even the fashion-conscious Riley, the returned celebrity coach of the Heat, can see the contradiction at work.
"The Lakers and the Heat don't deserve to be the marquee game," he said Friday.
"If it's based on the two best teams, the two finalists, the world champions and Detroit Pistons, they should be in the marquee game. But, the sidebar attractiveness of the Heat and Lakers transcends the purity of the game. What does that say?"
It says, as Commissioner David Stern admitted, that ABC dictated the order. No wonder. The Spurs-Pistons finals in June were the second-lowest rated in a quarter century, a reminder that the two best teams in the league use for motivation only when convenient.
"We never even think about it; it's a waste of time," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said this week, although he was disappointed that his team was not the host.
The Central time zone would make for an 11:30am start, though, just about when children are unwrapping their Shaq jerseys.
no marketing
"We don't market," Tim Duncan, the two-time league MVP, said dryly after the Spurs shellacked the Knicks on Wednesday. "We just try to win."
Popovich said he thought that marketers were missing the point. "Anybody that doesn't get a kick out of watching our team play should look in the mirror; it reflects more on them," he said.
"The way Tim Duncan plays and the way he is off the court is what any mother or father would love. It doesn't sell in this society of quick gratification, titillation, instant thrills and chills, and that's not what Tim Duncan is. I don't know if there's anybody more exciting than Tony Parker. Manu Ginobili, he should be on an extreme challenge reality show."
Popovich, a former counterintelligence officer in the Air Force, has enjoyed working behind the scenes in winning four titles since 1994. He has not written a book, nor does he do public speaking. He spends his free time with family and his 3,000-bottle wine collection. "I want to have a life -- sports is kind of boring to me," he said.
under the radar
"I'm on a totally different planet than the Browns, the Rileys and the Jacksons of the world. The Saunders, Van Gundys and Popoviches -- we came in under the radar. I'm not saying it's good or bad. Personally, I kind of love it."
Considering their respective books The Winner Within and The Last Season, Riley and Jackson know a thing or two about self-promotion. Pistons coach Flip Saunders said he had published one book: Flip Saunders' Shooting Tips from A to Z, which he did 28 years ago at a copy center while coaching at Golden Valley Lutheran College.
The Pistons warned Saunders about the anti-celebrity bias when he arrived at Detroit. "So many times teams get perceptions and it's very difficult to overcome that," Saunders said.
In giving his players offensive freedom, Saunders has made Detroit the sixth-highest-scoring team in the league (99.8) while the defense is sixth best in points allowed (91.3). Point guard Chauncey Billups will probably go to the All-Star Game for the first time, and Richard Hamilton is scoring a career-best 21.9 points a game.
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