AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - The San Antonio Spurs should have known they were in trouble when they saw the hair.

On his wife's orders, Ben Wallace had his famously shaggy mane teased to its full, glorious height before Game 3 of the NBA Finals - and the face beneath the 'fro was all grim determination.

"She said, 'Let your hair down and go out there and play some basketball, or else you can't eat,'" Wallace recalled.

The Detroit Pistons, a collection of castoffs turned into resilient champions, are at their best when they're playing as if their dinners depend on it. Down 0-2 in the best-of-seven series, they essentially had to win their first game back home. And with a hair-raising passion they lacked last week, the Pistons beat the Spurs 96-79 Tuesday night.

The defending champs got 24 points from a revitalized Richard Hamilton, 20 points and seven assists from big-game guard Chauncey Billups - and a spur to excellence from Wallace, their defensive leader.

When Wallace stole the game's opening pass and roared downcourt for a dunk, he reminded the Spurs that Detroit's veteran roster still knows what's necessary to win in June. Wallace was all over the court, even by his own athletic standards: He blocked five shots in the first quarter, then added a decisive dunk in the fourth.

"There really wasn't a message," Billups said. "We all knew how big this game was. You know the kind of desperation. You've got to play without fear. It was really just a silent message going around."

Perhaps that's because the Pistons couldn't hear each other over their deafening home crowd. Detroit's fans were their usual raucous selves, breathing life into their team with every standing ovation.

The Pistons harnessed that energy in the early minutes and again in the fourth quarter, when they put away the game with all the ruthlessness shown by the Spurs last week in San Antonio.

After the Spurs seemed capable of sweeping the finals during two convincing victories in Texas, Detroit trimmed San Antonio's lead in the best-of-seven series to 2-1.

Game 4 is Thursday night, with Game 5 on Sunday.

Almost nothing about Game 3 resembled the first two, when San Antonio seemed to get every loose ball, every big shot and every call.

Hamilton, hounded into ineffectiveness by Bruce Bowen in the first two games, credited the shift to "energy."

"We have to come out here and help each other out," he continued. "We have to come out and hit first. We can't come out and allow them to hit us and react to it. We have to be the ones that are aggressive."

All three games of the series have been close in the fourth quarter, but Detroit put this one away with nine straight points early in the period. Billups, last season's finals MVP, started the rally with a 3-pointer and a steal for a layup on consecutive possessions.

Tony Parker scored 21 points for the Spurs, who allowed 90 points for the first time in the franchise's three trips to the finals. San Antonio's vaunted defense thrives on momentum, but the Spurs had none of that fuel in Detroit.

The Pistons held Manu Ginobili to seven points and limited Tim Duncan to a 5-for-15 performance on the way to 14 points and 10 rebounds. Though San Antonio led at halftime and kept it close until the fourth, Detroit always seemed to be in control.

"We didn't play well for three quarters, and we were almost tied," Ginobili said. "It's something that we've got to be happy about in some sort of way. ... As a team, we just didn't have that juice, that sharpness that you need to play well on the road. I didn't play well. I don't think any of us played particularly well."

Ginobili confounded the Pistons in the first two games with his knack for making improbable fourth-quarter shots, but the Pistons were determined to squelch his creative game. They ran at least four defenders at him in single coverage, from lanky Tayshaun Prince to dogged Lindsey Hunter, and gave him few chances to affect the game.

Ginobili might have been mildly hobbled by a collision with Prince in the first minute, but he accepted the blame for having as many turnovers (six) as shots. Hunter, who also slowed Miami's Dwyane Wade in the conference finals, seemed particularly effective in preventing Ginobili's drives to the hoop - which could mean trouble for the Spurs.

"I don't know if they tried anything different," Duncan said. "Their aggressiveness was up, so that fueled what they were doing."