The list of NBA contenders in this crazy lockout-shortened season is short. Yes, there are plenty of teams who will claim that once the postseason starts that anything can happen. The list though is incredibly small if you ask most people. Miami, Chicago, Oklahoma City. Those seem to be the consensus three contenders.
But if we learned anything from the last lockout-shortened season, it is that anything can happen. An eight seed missing its best player can make the Finals.
And, of course, the San Antonio Spurs were the team ultimately to win that title. It was the beginning of the Spurs dynasty. And 2012 seems to be the end. Tim Duncan is getting older. Manu Ginobili is fighting injuries. The team is not quite the same.
Yet, those incredibly simple jerseys still say “Spurs” and Duncan and all his veteran craftiness is still around. Reports of San Antonio’s demise after losing to the eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies in last year’s postseason after a Western Conference-best 61-21 are horribly exagerated. San Antonio has the second best record in the West at 21-9 and is quietly as dangerous as ever.
Of course, San Antonio does not prove anything until the Playoffs. That is what the team has always been about since that championship season in 1999.
Tony Parker made headlines this summer when he said he felt the Spurs’ run was coming to an end. Thirty games into this lockout-shortened season, it appears he is changing his tune now that the team is coming together and the team is performing extremely well.
“When playing on a team like the San Antonio Spurs, there is no objective other than the title,” Parker told L’Equipe in France (h/t to Project Spurs). “It is in the DNA of this club. We will give everything to try to get a new “coronation”. The competition will be tough with Oklahoma City and Miami who are, for me, the best teams in the league right now but we have the weapons to get to the end. Even if some estimate that we are too old, it will be necessary, like every year, to count on Spurs in the fight for the title.”
Certainly not. San Antonio has won its past nine games, getting Ginobili back in the process. The Spurs have turned AT&T Center into an extremely difficult place to play, amassing a 13-1 home record.
This is still a team that no one can overlook. And, as Parker points out, the Ginobili injury allowed young players like Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green to get an opportunity to play. Like some of the other queitly successful teams this year, the Spurs feature a lot of balance. Parker is the team’s leading scorer with 19.0 points per game and 7.8 assists per game.
The strange part is, only three players on the Spurs average more than 10.0 points per game. But there are six players averaging 9.0 points per game and DeJuan Blair averages 8.9. This is a balanced team and, with a point guard like Parker, is likely to have just about any player have a big game at just about any time.
The question is: can this Spurs team muster up enough of that old resolve to win in the Playoffs? We saw this story last year and this San Antonio team will not be able to live down its loss to Memphis from last year’s playoffs or quiet its doubters until the team is in the second round.
Parker is right. San Antonio expects nothing less than a championship every year. The question is can this team be ready to avoid a repeat of last year when the postseason comes around?
