The San Antonio Spurs oftentimes seem to be thought of only for how much the collective NBA audience does not think of them. Their core remains Tim Duncan in lesser games played and shorter bursts of dominance; Manu Ginobili healthy and off the bench; and Tony Parker, this season’s underground M.V.P. candidate who makes the Spurs hum with an unsuspecting electricity that strikes harder and quicker than sometimes expected.
All three of these veterans sit in the league’s top 20 in Player Efficiency Rating, the gold standard of today regarding a player’s all-around game. And, for good measure, Parker put anyone who stayed up to watch the Spurs swiftly and almost effortlessly eradicate the Kobe-less Los Angeles Lakers last night on notice: San Antonio, while quietly slipping ahead of the Thunder for first in the Western Conference, is again in a position where only the foolish would write them off as too creaky for the shift towards young talent across the league or because of recent season’s playoff failures. For N.B.A. fans, this should be a welcome, and hopeful, sight.
San Antonio rightfully went down in the first round last season at the hands of a mauling Memphis Grizzlies team perfectly suited to defeat them. Here’s hoping, though, that the Spurs are around a bit longer this postseason. When thinking about it, the last time we saw these guys in the midst of a tense late-playoff pressure cooker was, well, awhile ago, depending on how far back you want to go. In 2010 they were finally had by the Phoenix Suns in that closer-than-it-looks sweep; in 2009 a first round exit to their Texan rival Dallas Mavericks; and in 2008, a year after winning the title over LeBron’s young Cavaliers, they fell in five to the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals.
The benefit of hindsight on last season serving as guide to this logic, we haven’t seen this Spurs team showing this kind of teeth in quite some time. It feels almost necessary that they make some noise in the postseason this time around, if for no other reason than they’ll be, if last night can serve as one small indication, a fantastic study in smart, hyper-focused basketball. Of course, if it were that easy all the time there’d be no need to clamor for the return of San Antonio to the latter stages of the postseason tournament in the first place.
With the Spurs, their current play and recent history mix into a confusing sign of what to expect. Sometimes it can be all about the match-ups and who’s playing best in a certain period of time, but often the top-shelf players rise to provide the defining difference between championship caliber and everything else. If the Spurs are primed to make a run, it will have to be the latter more than the former. And in that circumstance, it will be a treat to see them again.
Griffin Gotta contributes to The Hoop Doctors and is a co-managing editor of Straight Outta Vancouver. The story arcs and infinite weirdness of the NBA are addictions he deals with every day. Email him at griffingotta at gmail dot com.
