Before last night, before the 76ers stunned and humiliated the Detroit Pistons in Game 3 of the opening round of the playoffs, the perception was pretty clear. It went like this: The Pistons, taking the Sixers somewhat lightly, lost the opening game in the final minute, then recovered to win the second game convincingly.

This happens in the NBA all the time. The better team needs some motivation, finds it in a loss that shouldn't have happened, and asserts itself from that point on.

What took place last night in the Wachovia Center, however, doesn't happen all the time. In fact, it almost never happens. One of the few exceptions is when the better team isn't really the better team after all.

Is that what we have here?

The Sixers didn't win with mirrors last night. They didn't win on a prayer or a fluke or a call that went this way or that. They won because they were better. A lot better.

Whether the Sixers are the better team in the rest of the series - they need only to split the four remaining games to advance - is still to be determined. But, yes, you are allowed to wonder now.

This wasn't merely the case of a young, energetic team hanging around with a superior opponent. This looked like a young, energetic team sapping the determination out of a veteran team that perhaps has seen too many big games to muster the energy necessary for another postseason run. That will be determined as well, but it is certainly what it looked like.

"They imposed their will for how they wanted to play," Detroit coach Flip Saunders said. "They got into us."

The Sixers got into them to the extent that Detroit, which led the league in fewest turnovers committed, gave the ball away 25 times. Despite allowing the Pistons to shoot a decent percentage from the field in the first half, the Sixers still held a four-point lead because those turnovers limited Detroit's attempts.

"Active hands," Sixers coach Maurice Cheeks called it. "Defense and active hands."

The turnovers caused by those active hands let the Sixers score in the open court. They didn't have to pound the ball and run half-court sets all night against a Pistons defense that had time to establish itself. Early offense is what the Sixers had trouble creating before last night, and now you know why Detroit worked so hard to prevent it.

The Sixers are still the Sixers. They are still the team that went 40-42 this season. But if you let them play the way they want - aggressively on the defensive end and running the floor on the offensive end - the Sixers will beat you. They will even beat you if you won 59 games this season and have been to the conference finals five straight times. In fact, they will beat you by 20 points.

"When a team takes one of your strengths and makes it a weakness, you're going to struggle," Saunders said, referring to the turnovers. "You get anxious. You get good looks and miss them, and then you start to play a little out of character."

That certainly didn't look like the Detroit Pistons missing 14 straight shots from the field in the third quarter, a stretch that extended to 17 with three more misses at the start of the fourth quarter. The Sixers went from a two-point lead at the beginning of that Detroit misery, 48-46, to a 19-point lead at the end of it, 74-55.

"That did us in," Saunders said.

So, that's the new reality, right? The younger team has taken the upper hand and the doddering group of veterans is on the way out. There has been a changing of the guard - and the forwards and the centers.

Not so fast.

"The Detroit team has been in this situation many, many times," Cheeks warned. "We know we have to play a great game like this to win the game. We've got to keep doing the things we did tonight. They'll make adjustments. That's how the playoffs are. And Detroit, I know the wars they've been through."

True enough, but those wars have left scars and taken their toll in many ways. Chauncey Billups, maybe the only guy having a more disappointing series than Andre Iguodala, is 8 for 26 from the floor now. Antonio McDyess is struggling to keep up with the pace. Last night, Rasheed Wallace couldn't seem to generate any enthusiasm for the proceedings. This didn't look like a team with its back to the wall, which is how you have to play in the postseason. It looked like a team with its hand on the doorknob.

"We'll play better," Saunders said, and that is certainly the expectation.

But now you are free to wonder if the other team will let them.