Remember last season, when the Spurs bagged a 61-21 record but promptly fell to the Memphis Grizzlies (a fact the sports media never seems to shut up about)? While the Spurs have clinched the Western Conference again, this time, it's different.

One of the things the 61-21 record doesn't show is that the Spurs stumbled in the home stretch. At one point they lost five in a row, even. But this season, the Spurs have not lost more than twice in a row, and have gone 35-7 (as of this writing) since a late January game when the second team nearly mounted a comeback against the Mavericks. By contrast the Thunder, the Bulls, and the Heat have had worse Aprils than the Spurs.

Add to that multiple acquisitions (trading George Hill for Kawhi Leonard, then the mid season acquisitions of Stephen Jackson, Boris Diaw, and Patrick Mills) and several players developing (Gary Neal, Danny Green, Tiago Splitter) and the Spurs look poised to make noise in the playoffs, or another championship, even.