MIAMI – The pressure of Game 7 didn’t faze the defending champions.

In a deciding game that stayed close the entire 48 minutes, the Detroit Pistons summoned their experience and played with calmness and poise down the stretch to defeat the Miami Heat 88-82 last night in the final game of the Eastern Conference finals.

Now, it’s back to the NBA Finals for the team often dismissed as a fluke champion – a label the Pistons can get rid of with four more wins.

Dwyane Wade played for Miami after missing Game 6 because of a rib muscle injury, but he was only good for brief stretches. He finished with 20 points but didn’t score over the final 15 minutes.

Richard Hamilton scored 22 points, Rasheed Wallace added 20 – including two foul shots that put Detroit ahead for good with 1:26 remaining – and the Pistons closed the game with a 10-3 run to hand Miami yet another heartbreaking Game 7 loss on its home floor.

Detroit won for the 10th straight time when needing one victory to clinch a series, the second longest such streak behind the Lakers’ record 12-game streak that ended in 2004.

The Pistons also became the first Eastern Conference team in 23 years to win a Game 7 on the road. They open the finals Thursday at San Antonio.

Shaquille O’Neal led Miami with 27 points, but the Heat faltered offensively in the final two minutes – with Wade the biggest culprit when he forced up a 20-footer that missed badly with 1:13 left. Wallace followed with a put back of Tayshaun Prince’s miss to make it 82-79, and Detroit went 6-for-6 from the foul line – pressure, what pressure? – the rest of the way.

Wade scored 12 points in the third quarter, but he was wincing in pain in the game’s final minutes. His basket with 3:10 left in the third quarter was his last of the night.

Detroit’s win extended Larry Brown’s coaching career for at least four more games, pitting him against his good friend, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, and another dominant big man, Tim Duncan, in the finals. The Pistons and Spurs split their season series 1-1.

Brown was elated as the final seconds ticked down, racing up the sideline to embrace Wallace near midcourt and then sprinting back to his bench to whoop it up a little more. The sentimental pangs that Brown was experiencing before Game 6 were diminished this time.

“Not so much as the last game,” Brown said. “I was home, my family was around. Now, I’m just excited about the opportunity, because these don’t come around very much.”

Brown has been with the Pistons for only two seasons, one of the shortest stints of his nomadic coaching career – but easily the most successful.

“It’s turned out way beyond my wildest dreams,” Brown said.

Detroit got 18 points from Chauncey Billups and 13 from Prince, proving once again that a team-wide effort can often be more than enough to defeat a team with two superstars. That’s what the Pistons did against O’Neal and Kobe Bryant in the NBA Finals last year, and that’s what they did against O’Neal and Wade, too.

“That’s what we do!” Hamilton yelled in a jubilant Detroit locker room. Hamilton has scored 20 or more points in 16 of the Pistons’ 17 postseason games.

Wade was noticeably slow during the game’s first few minutes, laboring as he ran at half-speed and missing his first three shots. There was a brief burst midway through the first quarter when Wade started to look more like himself, sprinting downcourt and feeding an alley-oop pass to O’Neal, then hitting a 3-pointer for a 17-9 lead.

Miami led 23-21 after one quarter behind 10 points from O’Neal on 5-for-6 shooting, but the Pistons went ahead early in the second quarter and stayed in front for the rest of the half.

Wade was looser early in the third quarter, knocking down his first two shots and looking to penetrate the lane. But as good as his offense was, Detroit’s was just as efficient.

Damon Jones sprained his left ankle in the first quarter but returned before halftime. He scored only one point.

– Associated Press