Post Season Thoughts: Are the Spurs No Longer Special?

Well Pounders, it's that time of year again. The time of year where the Spurs get ready for a nice bonding fishing trip. The time of year where the media pundits rejoice that the boring small-market team doesn't bog down the NBA Finals ratings again. And, more recently, the time of year when the pundits call us too old and transform to kids at Christmas finally speculating about the end of the Spurs Dynasty and the retirement of Tim Duncan.

Firstly, this series was awful, horrible, I hated it, it sucked. There are teams that I would be alright with losing to, like the..... like the..... like the not-Grizzlies.

Did you hear that Zach, if someone existed who was the complete opposite of you, and we lost to him, I might actually be OK with it. MY OPINION COUNTS!!!

This series sucked, and many of our players didn't play up to capacity.

Seriously Matt, don't you watch Coach B. USE BOTH HANDS

But honestly what pissed me off the most about the Grizzlies were the players arrogant, attitudes. They walked into Game 5 expecting the Spurs to lie down, and they were upset when they didn't.  That's what made this moment so perfect for me:

"The first thing I want you to do is to get those pieces of crap out of my arena! Don't just get them out of the Arena get them out of San Antonio. Because I've proved son, without a shadow of a doubt, that you don't have what it takes to beat us at home. You talk about your Gasol, your Z-Bounds and your Shane Battier 3s, well Gary Neal's 3 says we just whooped your ass." - Ice Cold Gary Neal

Sadly a series comeback was not to be, and I think we all saw it coming. But it was a great ride, we took a team whose main pieces consisted of 2 over the hill players, one injured player, and Tony Parker, and whose playoff hopes still rested upon Richard Jefferson doing something. I'm damn proud of this team, nobody thought we would even get 50 wins. We were #2 in the NBA, we beat out the Lakers, the Celtics, and the Heat. Think about that. We started losing because we were tired. We were tired because we were older, and for nobody was this more evident than in Tim Duncan. He was clearly gassed by Game 6 and it showed. If we want to contend next year we're gonna need a lot more pieces.

But nothing baffled me more then the talk of the crumbling of the Spurs dynasty. Uh... guys. Get with the news! The Spurs last won the title in 2007. The NBA has moved on, Tim Duncan has grown older. Let's assume Tim Duncan leaves and doesn't have the chance to get another ring. They assume that we cannot win anymore once Timmeh leaves. they assume that we will no longer special. They assume that we will go away.

I'm here to defend the Spurs and say right now, the Spurs may not win another title for a long time but I'm here to say that the Spurs are not going away.  I'll admit, I'm not the oldest Spurs fan out there, my earliest memories of the Spurs are of David Robinson and Sean Elliot wrecking the league right before some young upstart from Wake Forest took the league by storm. I remember never having won a championship and having the thrill of the first, then the second, the third, and the fourth. Who would've thought that the Spurs would've been able to have a comparative decade to the Lakers? And yet we did? But why? What made us special?

Before we had GOATPUFF we had this guy.

The reason I began watching the Spurs, besides the obvious of being born in San Antonio, was their character. Think of it, who were our biggest stars of the last two Spurs eras. Tim Duncan and David Robinson.Good-natured big men, who played tough but are both great individuals. Was this coincidence? Sure, we lucked out by getting both of these guys as the first pick in the NBA draft, but for the Spurs character is just as much a consideration as talent. We would've found players of good-character to represent the Spurs had we not gotten Tim Duncan and David Robinson; we would not have enjoyed the success that we have, but we would've found the players.

When people say the Spurs will go away, they are talking about win/loss totals. But what they don't understand is that behind all the wins, behind all the championships, behind  the long line of great players to don the silver and black. There remains one thing. Be good off the court first, and on the court second, the Spurs will never go away, no matter how much you want it. Deal with it.