BOSTON — Once they were the "Bad Boys," the first team to bring in-your-face, blue-collar defense to the NBA. The names were Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer and Dennis Rodman, and the style was lunch pail and hard hat, as tough as working on the line in the automobile factories Detroit was built on.

They were the architects of the style, the same one these Pistons have used to go to six straight Eastern Conference finals. Chauncey Billups. Rasheed Wallace. Richard Hamilton. Tayshaun Prince. These are the names now, but the style basically remained the same, as in homage to the guys who came before.

Bring your lunch pail.

These aren't the high-flying Lakers, complete with Kobe dunks. These aren't the Spurs, with the low-post brilliance of Tim Duncan and the sprinter's speed of Tony Parker.

These are the Pistons, and what they are is efficient.

From Billups, the steady point guard who always seems to make the big shots, to Hamilton, who is forever running around screens, to Wallace, who flat-out knows how to score, the Pistons are a team whose whole always has been better than the individual parts.

Are they as good as they were a couple of years ago?

Probably not.

There have been a lot of playoff appearances, a lot of big games.

The word is they are not as tough defensively as they once were, back when they always seemed to be able to make the big stop when they had to.

Some of that is, no doubt, age.

Some of that is that defensive intensity is the one thing that's probably the most difficult thing to sustain, the one thing that starts to slip away before the other things do.

Still, the Pistons are in this Eastern Conference finals because they can bring the defensive heat, the one that allowed them to go into Orlando and win in the conference semifinals, the game that defined that series.

Bring your lunch pail.

So there they were Tuesday night in the Garden, in still another Eastern Conference final, still the team in the East that you have to get through. Here they were with their swagger and their attitude, the one that says we've been here before and we know what it takes. An attitude rooted in history and results.

"The first game is like a championship fight," said Pistons coach Flip Sanders about an hour before last night's game. "You feel each other out."

So it was on this night, two excellent teams going at each other, with a trip to the NBA Finals waiting out there on the horizon, like a vision of basketball Oz.

"We're where we wanted to be," said Celtics coach Doc Rivers before the game. "Where we thought we'd be."

The first half was what we've come to expect from these two teams, a grind-it-out affair. Then again, the Pistons never have been into style points. They rarely run. They rarely astound you with their athleticism. What they do is get you to play the way they want you to play — walk it up, push and grab, basketball out of some grainy old black-and-white newsreel.

The "Bad Boys" in baggier uniforms.

The "Bad Boys" for the new millennium.

Midway through the third quarter, Kevin Garnett already had 20 points, thanks to an assortment of jumpers and his patented fallaways. His ability to shoot the ball over both Wallace and Antonio McDyess bodes well for this series.

Can Detroit guard Garnett?

In Game One, it couldn't.

Sunday it had been Paul Pierce who put the Celtics on his back and carried them. Tuesday night, in many ways, it was Garnett, who had a monster game, setting the tone early.

"This was the perfect time for them to come in here and steal one," Pierce said, "and we were aware of that."

And in the closing minutes, the game still in a some doubt, Pierce made a honey of a pullup jumper and Rajon Rondo connected on a wide-open three from the left side, and the Celtics once again had held serve, 88-79, now one step closer to getting back to the NBA Finals.

The Pistons are the last obstacle standing in the way of the Celtics' quest to get back to the NBA Finals and a chance to win that elusive 17th championship banner, the one the Celtics have been searching for more than two decades now.

It still promises to be a stern test.

These are not the young Hawks, who were not ready to win. Not the Cavaliers, LeBron and just a bunch of names, LeBron against the world.

These are the Pistons, the basketball descendants of the original "Bad Boys," back when the names were Isiah and Dumars, Laimbeer and Rodman, back when the Pistons brought the in-your-face, blue-collar defensive style to the NBA, a style as tough as the city they represented.

These are the Pistons, a veteran team that knows how to win and has been here before, in the middle of the bright lights, in the middle of the big stage.

Bring your lunch pail.

Fortunately, the Celtics did.