Jun 13, 2013; San Antonio, TX, USA; San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker (9) shoots against Miami Heat center Chris Bosh (1) during the second half of game four in the 2013 NBA Finals at the AT

The Finals can be a difficult time for fans of the other 28 teams in the Association. Complex loyalties and bitter histories come together to bring out bogs of conflicting emotions. This year, the Pistons fans who haven’t completely tuned out and hitched their wagons to the Tigers find themselves between a rock and the best player on the planet. But both the (pounding the) rock and the aforementioned best player on the planet have done serious damage to the Pistons, and this makes choosing a side a grim prospect.

The San Antonio Spurs ripped the guts out of a Pistons team fresh from a championship in 2005. A few years later LeBron James used that same Pistons core as a trampoline into superstardom, cutting through our aging core like a broadsword through yogurt in a fateful Game 5 double overtime. Not exactly a series wrought with subjectivity for the Pistons faithful.

So who should Pistons fans root for? A serious question demands some serious analysis.

The Case For The San Antonio Spurs

The Spurs are a team, the way all the championship Pistons squads were. The pieces weren’t quite equivalent, but the same unselfish Jack Shephard (from LOST, a popular show from the mid 2000s) style “live together die alone” approach shines through in every extra pass, every smart cut to the basket.

It is amusing to see Erik Spolestra get stressed out. Man, that guy gets stressed out.

Chris “Birdman” Anderson is not currently a San Antonio Spur so they have that going for them.

If you have a desire to see Kawhi Leonard smile.

If you are more impressed with an engineer building the bridge than Godzilla knocking the bridge down.

If you want to punish all those racists who tweeted terrible things about the little boy singing the National Anthem.

The Spurs were good to Antonio McDyess. Antonio was good to the Pistons.

The Case for the Miami Heat

LeBron James is the best player on the planet and just a straight up joy to watch. Come on, you know it to be true!

The Heat’s swarming and smothering trap defense makes you giddy, like when you still believed in things.

You feel bad that Mario Chalmers gets yelled at constantly. It makes you feel the way you felt when Optimus Prime died.

The Spurs invented flopping right? Specifically Manu Ginobli.

The Spurs fleeced the Pistons of their second back-to-back championship.

Brandon Knight is from South Florida. Man, that is NOT a good reason to support the Heat.

You have an inkling of Eastern Conference pride. The Western Conference has more hubris than Odysseus.

Conclusion

Both of these teams are very good at basketball and hopefully they both lose.

At least one of these guys is playing tonight. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

The last time the Spurs and Pistons met, Detroit pulled off a surprising upset at home, beating San Antonio by double digits and putting an end to their 11 game winning streak. It’s probably not wise to suggest a similar outcome this time around for the Pistons — especially on the road against the team with the NBA’s best record — but they do have something working in their favor.

Tony Parker is sidelined for potentially the next month of action with an ankle sprain. Parker had been having the best season of his career, inserting himself into the discussion for MVP and even starting a few arguments (mostly between Spurs fans and everyone else) over whether he was the league’s best point guard. Manu Ginobili will likely replace most of Parker’s duties as a distributor, which he is more than capable of handling, but the Spurs’ point guard depth is incredibly suspect. Gary Neal is doubtful for tonight’s game, which leaves San Antonio with rookie Nando De Colo, Patty Mills, and Cory Joseph as their only options. De Colo has upside, but is still adjusting to the NBA game and turns the ball over more than Brandon Knight as a point man. Mills can shoot, but offers virtually nothing else, and Joseph is basically an 11th or 12th man. Jose Calderon and Will Bynum need to take advantage of this mismatch if Detroit wants to make this game even remotely competitive.

Unfortunately for the Pistons, that’s the only positional advantage they’re going to have. Manu Ginobili, Danny Green, and Kawhi Leonard are considerably better than Detroit’s wings, and Tim Duncan is superior to any player the Pistons will have on the floor. The Spurs should have a huge advantage in bench play, as well, with Ginobili, Tiago Splitter, Mills, and Matt Bonner. The gap in coaching acumen between Gregg Popovich and Lawrence Frank is too depressing to go into detail about, but needless to say it’s vast.

The lack of Parker on the floor gives the Pistons the tiniest bit of an opening, and anything can happen on any given night in the NBA (like, say, the Phoenix Suns beating the Spurs in San Antonio last Wednesday), but it’s probably best not to get our hopes up for this one. There are a lot of potential timelines for a game like this, let’s just hope we don’t get the one that ends with Jose Calderon losing his arm, Jason Maxiell dying his hair, Andre Drummond eating a gnome, and Jonas Jerebko turning heel.