After a season in which the highflying Phoenix Suns dominated the positive headlines and league wide scoring increased, ABC executives must have been cursing their luck when the league’s stingiest defensive teams clinched berths in the NBA Finals. Indeed, Game 1 between the Detroit Pistons and the San Antonio Spurs received a 7.2 rating, down sharply from last year’s 9.8; it was the second-lowest rating for an NBA Finals opening game in prime time. It lost its timeslot to “CSI.”

It shouldn’t be this way. True, blowouts in each of the first three games didn’t help, but both Games 1 and 3 were close until the fourth quarter and hinged on brilliant defensive adjustments that somehow escaped the TV analysts. The Spurs and Pistons are the two most recent NBA champions, and while neither team explodes off the screen offensively, ABC could do a much better job of highlighting their defensive strengths.

To most TV viewers, blocks and steals stand out as the primary defensive plays, but those are merely the icing on the Pistons’ and Spurs’ excellent on-ball defense. Both squads guard the rim with gifted shot-blockers – the Spurs’ Tim Duncan and the Pistons’ Ben Wallace – who allow their smaller teammates to play tight man-to-man defense and disrupt their opponents’ offensive rhythm.

The strategy is simple yet effective: Cut off the passing lanes, force low-percentage shots, and rebound the miss. That describes 36 of the Spurs’ 64 unsuccessful possessions in Game 3, and 69 of the Pistons’ 109 fruitless possessions in Games 1 and 2. To the casual viewer this must have represented hoops futility, not a showcase of superb defense.

The Pistons’ struggles in Games 1 and 2 were a direct result of their inability to run their offensive staples, most notably the curl play to Richard Hamilton. When the Detroit offense is clicking, Hamilton starts at the top of the key on the right side and runs a circle counterclockwise toward the low post, where a Piston big man screens Rip’s defender. Hamilton then gets the ball and continues toward the top left corner of the key, where another screen awaits him. As he comes off the second screen, he either has an open shot or an open lane to pass to the second screener, who is usually rolling toward the basket while his defender is trying to help out on Hamilton.

The Spurs deftly anticipated this play in Games 1 and 2, sending an extra defender – usually Robert Horry or Nazr Mohammed – to meet Hamilton as he came off the second screen. This gave the Spurs a mismatch in their favor, and those defenders denied Hamilton his shots while using their long arms to block easy passing lanes. Forced to make a quick decision, Hamilton usually tried to force the ball toward a covered teammate. But even when those passes got through, the curl play had used up most of the shot clock, and the Pistons had to rush a prayer toward the rim.

The Pistons returned the favor in Games 3 and 4 by denying Manu Ginobili the space to make his favorite moves. On several occasions, Ginobili got the ball near the elbow and looked to drive to the middle, where a Piston was waiting to double-team him. When he turned toward the baseline, Ginobili found his path closed off by his original defender, and was forced to pass to either Duncan or Horry in the hopes of resetting the offense.

These tactics helped Detroit slow Ginobili, who had torched them for 53 points in the first two games, to seven in Game 3 and only 12 in Game 4. The Pistons also noticed that although Duncan is a very good passer, he rarely gives it up when he gets the ball deep in the paint. Thus, when he got good position last night, the Pistons brought either Rasheed Wallace or Antonio McDyess to double team him, which led to several blocked shots and bricks on what is usually an easy deuce for the Spurs. Duncan’s shooting plummeted from 46.8% in the two San Antonio wins to a horrid 31.2% in games 3 and 4.

This kind of pro-active play is what sets up superb on-ball defense, and allows defenders, among other things, to take a charge by beating an offensive player to the spot. It’s a result of tactics and strategy, yet the ABC analysts missed the boat. Even Hubie Brown, a well-regarded, defense-oriented coach himself, could only remark, “They denied him on that.”

It’s truly unfortunate that ABC hasn’t committed to the details of the telecast, because interested viewers would undoubtedly like to learn the nuts and bolts of how the NBA’s two best defenses earn their paychecks. First, the network needs to provide viewers with a telestrator. Second, if Brown isn’t prepared to illustrate the Pistons’ and Spurs’ favorite offense tendencies and how the defenses are shutting them down, then ABC should hire someone else – perhaps another defensive-minded coach – to explain them. John Madden has made football plays accessible by scribbling 22 men on a telestrator, so surely ABC can find someone to account for the 10 men on the floor during NBA games.

What this amounts to is simply a tacit acknowledgement of how basketball has changed. TV has had an easy time of it for over two decades; the Showtime Lakers and Bird’s Celtics were charismatic, entertaining teams, while the Jordan-Pippen Bulls and Shaq-Kobe Lakers made it easy to focus on one or two players. The Pistons and Spurs, by contrast, are classic teams whose accomplishments are greater than the sum of their parts. By better illustrating defense and cultivating an appreciation of half-court basketball, ABC will avoid the kind of ratings disaster that it is dealing with this spring.