The Pistons will head down south Wednesday night for a two-day, two-game swing through the Lone Star State.

Detroit is looking to bounce back from a hard-fought loss to the Celtics Saturday night, a Boston win that snapped an 11-game win streak.

In Dallas, Dirk Nowitzki has undoubtedly recovered from his early-season slump. He leads the team in scoring, averaging 22 a night, as well as rebounds.

Devin Harris and Josh Howard have also elevated their games in the past weeks, and Eric Dampier has done surprisingly well and will be a tough cover on both ends of the floor. As usual, Jason “The Jet” Terry can be deadly from outside and must be closely guarded from the perimeter.

The Spurs, on the other hand, look like they’ve just entered a slump. As we know from the past, the Spurs always have the bar set pretty high, so five losses in the last ten games in unlike them. They remain on top of the Southwest, but their lead on Dallas has been trimmed to a microscopic 0.5 games.

Tim Duncan and Tony Parker are coming off a combined 63-point effort in a loss to the Warriors. Duncan went to the line 16 times during that game, so the Pistons will need to watch out for the soft and-1’s (followed by no emotion from Tim of course). As usual, Manu “Flop” Ginobili still remains a threat off the bench. Detroit will also need to watch Bruce Bowen for the open baseline 3 as a result of help-D or double teams, especially if the game is close near the end.

Combined, the Mavs and Spurs are 33-5 at home.

Nevertheless, I’m sure slumps mean nothing to the Spurs when it comes to facing their 2005 Finals rivals. Expect San Antonio to come out firing, but expect nothing less from our Pistons.