N.B.A. Finals - Battier and Howard United in Bid for Championship Ring Steve Sisney/Reuters Miami's Juwan Howard, 39, is the last active member of Michigan's Fab Five. He and Battier are both seeking their first N.B.A. title. MIAMI - Teammates this season for the second time during their long N.B.A. careers, Shane Battier and Juwan Howard say they have never had the Duke-Michigan conversation. Though it did come up that Battier, the erstwhile Blue Devil who grew up in a Detroit suburb, once accepted a pair of autographed sneakers from Howard when the latter was playing for the Wolverines as a member of the Fab Five. "He was a freshman in high school or maybe even eighth grade and he came to watch Michigan play a game, and he recalled that I gave him a pair," Howard said. I thought that was pretty funny. The N.B.A. finals are typically and at times excessively about stars, their validation as title worthy and their legacies in relation to others who perform at ascendant levels. This year's has been no different with the featured showdown of Miami's LeBron James against Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant, both ring-less, with James's team leading two games to one heading into Game 4 Tuesday night. But with every finalist comes a supporting player or two who bring their own unique history and bid for that elusive championship ring. Having played together in Houston in 2006-7 before Battier joined Howard in Miami this season, their stories also intersect at the bitter rivalry of the early 1990s between Duke and Michigan that was revived last year with the release of the ESPN documentary "The Fab Five." Battier, who attended the same high school as Chris Webber (Detroit Country Day) and rooted for those Michigan teams before turning down a Michigan scholarship offer to attend Duke, said he had not actually seen the film. "I didn't watch it just because of all the negative press around it," he said. And, you know, I lived it. He referred not only to the general anti-Duke sentiment but in the way some of it was expressed in the film by the Fab Five's (and ESPN's) Jalen Rose, who said that he - as a child who was abandoned by his biological father (the former N.B.A. star Jimmy Walker) - viewed Duke's players as privileged while also invoking the pejorative "Uncle Toms." As the product of a mixed-race marriage, Battier has spoken of the difficulties of being stereotypically viewed as culturally black in a suburban private school by white students and as white by black A.A.U. teammates from the city. Rose's comments in the film not only created a news-media storm but drew an ardent written response from Grant Hill - one of the Duke stars from those early 1990s teams - that was published in The New York Times. Hill wrote: "I caution my fabulous five friends to avoid stereotyping me and others they do not know in much the same way so many people stereotyped them back then for their appearance and swagger." Battier said he read Hill's article about hearing about what was said in the film. "Maya Angelou couldn't have written it and expressed it better," he said. But Howard - who was cared for by a grandmother after being given up by his single teenage mother - said that he believed Rose's critics missed the point of what was said in the film. "That's what I really liked about it, that we were able to be honest and talk about how we felt as players back then," he said. I actually got a lot of positive comments from people and a few from some who thought that Grant had taken it a little bit too far. Because Jalen was only saying that was how we as Michigan players felt when we were 17, 18 years old. At 39, a bench player who has not appeared in the finals, Howard is the last active member of the Fab Five, which had its consecutive championship game appearances at Michigan vacated in 2002 because of N.C.A.A. violations. One of the league's most respected elder statesmen, Howard is also the last championship hope for the players of that team. Battier, a key player for the Heat and its third-leading scorer in the finals, starred for Duke's 2001 title team and had his number retired by the university. But he and Howard have logged a combined 30 years in the N.B.A. without winning a championship and both said they would proudly stand together if the Heat can get to the finish. "I'm not 18 anymore and I believe we both have a lot of respect for each program," Howard said. To which Battier added: "I grew up idolizing Juwan Howard. So for me it's the irony of all ironies that I'm his teammate and we have this chance to win an N.B.A. championship together.