You know what we're about to find out? It's not whether San Antonio can handle the pressure. Well, it could be that, a little. There's some of that, sure. Tim Duncan crashes a few more brick free throws up there at crunch time, and I'd venture that a few thoughts about Duncan's overall superstar value will have been solidified.
It's not whether Detroit has staying power. You already know that. The Pistons are the team that comes out the other end of "The Day After Tomorrow" with pressed uniforms, looking for a gym that has any hardwood left on the floor. They stick around.
Nope, what we're about to find out is at once much more basic and much more grand, and that is whether seven games can save the soul of a sport.
Frankly, six games came pretty close to taking care of it. For the 37 people still tuned in to the Pistons-Spurs series after those first four dreckathons, the payoff was more than reasonable: Robert Horry gave the NBA Finals a signature moment, and the occasion of Game 6 meant that David Stern and Billy Hunter had just enough time to jet out to San Antonio and grandstand through another great-job-us session (what, they're to be lionized for not running their business into the ground?) after agreeing on a new labor deal.
That has nothing to do with the Finals, but it's about the NBA, and it matters. Of more immediate significance, the lockout aversion cleared the decks for folks to get interested in the basketball again, and Detroit repaid that attention by forcing the first Finals Game 7 since the days of the O.J. Simpson car chase.
Seventh games are good for the spirit even in wholly crappy series. This one hasn't been wholly crappy, but it was so bad so early that almost no one stuck around to see the good stuff closer to the finish, which is a fairly strong indication that it was crappy enough. A Game 7, though, people will watch.
They'll watch to see Duncan in the crucible. It's worth the investment of four quarters of attention to learn what happens when a player who very deservedly has been portrayed as a franchise carrier finally experiences the kind of pressure situation from which other players' similar reputations were forged. Amazingly enough, Duncan's never been there never needed to be there in order to win.
The Pistons, likewise, didn't get enough of a series from the dysfunctional Lakers last spring to experience a big-game moment, unless you subscribe to the theory that they're all big games in the NBA Finals (which is fine, but what do you then call a Game 7? A bigger game?). They simply cut through L.A., won it in five and went on with their business. They've won plenty of critical games since, including a Game 7 in the Eastern Conference finals in Miami, but Game 7 of the Finals doesn't compare.
You'd think the NBA refs, if they're the orchestrators of the league's secret will that they're so often made out to be, could have forced more seventh games over the years. Baseball seems to get there often enough. The Super Bowl is one giant seventh game, although it pulls up lame so often that we probably ought to exclude it from the conversation. Shoot, the NHL pulls a seventh game in the Stanley Cup every now and then, and it can't even keep its doors open.
The allure, for the NBA, is really salvation. There was never going to be a massive draw to the Pistons-Spurs series, certainly not in the way that sending Shaq and Dwyane Wade out there might have created. Or, maybe the interest that would have come with seeing a fun-and-gun outfit like Phoenix refuse to use the Finals as an excuse to clock in at anywhere below, say, 110 ppg. But going the distance, down to the last possible game of the season, doesn't stink.
Seventh games create new heroes or affirm old ones. Duncan could rise to the occasion, but don't be surprised if someone like Tony Parker has his day all of a sudden. It could be Rasheed Wallace, atoning with finality for his defensive lapse on Horry in Game 5, but maybe it's Chauncey Billups' time to shine.
It isn't always a Willis Reed moment, when you get right down to it. Sometimes, the NBA championship is decided in that Parker/Billups kind of way. In 1984, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson squared off, but the Celtics didn't beat the Lakers until Cedric Maxwell, who'd been averaging 11 points, came up with a 24-point, eight-rebound, eight-assist gem in Game 7.
The last game on the docket isn't real picky about that kind of stuff, and neither is the casual fan. Most of us checked out on the Pistons and Spurs roughly four games ago but, look, there's nothing so wrong with any NBA Finals that a riveting Game 7 can't address.
Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. Reach him at mkreidler@sacbee.com.