The San Antonio Spurs are still good, but they’re also hurting.
Excuse me if I’m telling you something you already know; I just felt compelled to remind everyone. Because they’re good. Really good. Second-best-record-in-the-NBA good.
A few jokesters (idiots?) probably predicted their demise. And by “probably,” I mean definitely. It happens every year. People mistake their postseason failures for the end. Tim Duncan is old. Manu Ginobili is old. Tony Parker isn’t young. This team is finished.
Sound familiar? It should, because we’ve heard something similar on repeat for the last three or four years. Those like myself, through trial and error, have come to know the Spurs are never done, though. Not with Gregg Popovich guiding them. And not when Danny Greens and Kawhi Leonards keep falling into their lap.
There are plans in place for when Duncan, Ginobili and Parker (later on) retire. Plans that extend beyond Leonard and Green, among others. You might not know it yet, but with the Spurs, you don’t have to. You just know it’s there.
But anyway, I digress. As good as they are, the Spurs aren’t perfect. We saw that last season in the NBA Finals, when they came within seconds of a fourth championship of the Big Three era, only to squander everything on the heels of a failed rebound and subsequent dagger, courtesy of Ray Allen. And that was just Game 6. There was also Game 7, and the point-blank miss that will likely haunt Duncan for years to come.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44T6FYdLcLc
Comforting as it seems to know the Spurs were good enough to push the Miami Heat to seven games, it’s also torture. The Spurs still think about it, something Green himself admitted to USA Today‘s Sam Amick:
“It’s not easy, man,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “I feel like every day, every game that we have now, you’d think (those Finals memories) would go away. But it’s always lingering there. Even with the little mistakes, the subtle mistakes here and there, you (think) back to the mistakes that we made in June…We feel like we’re preparing for that now, which is good, and I think it’s going to help us.”
Missed opportunities are something you’ll never forget, but the Spurs have already begun the healing process. It’s still early, of course, but they’re not playing as if they’re stuck in the past. Plagued by self-pity. Thinking of what could have been. No, they’re playing as if they’re still hungry, seeking another title to hang on the mantle.
Are we surprised? Of course not. That’s the San Antonio Spurs way. Working hard. Contending for titles. Aging not.
They could have sent LeBron James and friends back to Miami empty-handed, disappointed and facing serious questions about their future. But they didn’t. They, for lack of a better word, failed. And they haven’t forgotten about their finals transgressions. Green, Parker, Duncan—all of them. Nor will they ever.
Somehow, that will probably make them more dangerous. Because they’re the Spurs, who exist only to win and prove their critics wrong.
Dan Favale is a firm believer in the three-pointer as well as the notion that defense doesn’t always win championships. His musings can be found at Bleacherreport.com in addition to TheHoopDoctors.com. Follow @danfavale on Twitter for his latest posts and all things NBA.
