Tim Duncan Journals & Articles tbh.

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DUNCAN AND POPOVICH: A LOVE STORY

It hasn't always been easy, but for 16 NBA seasons they've made it work

By Elizabeth Merrill (http://search.espn.go.com/elizabeth-merrill/) | ESPN.com

A young man with a future as wide as the state of Texas once wandered off on a trip to Florida. He was wined and dined and saw his face on billboards. Tiger Woods was there to greet him. "Welcome to Orlando," he said to Tim Duncan (http://espn.go.com/nba/player/_/id/215/tim-duncan). Woods teed off and launched a shot that disappeared into the sky, then dropped a few feet from the cup. "It was almost like God dropped the ball down," a person who was standing next to Duncan said. Duncan is not an excitable man, but even he thought that was cool. It made the trip even more surreal.

It was the summer of 2000, and Duncan, future Hall of Famer for the San Antonio Spurs (http://espn.go.com/nba/team/_/name/sa/san-antonio-spurs), was making a free-agent trip to another city. By all accounts, Duncan was seriously contemplating the Orlando Magic (http://espn.go.com/nba/team/_/name/orl/orlando-magic). He was 24 years old, his eyes were even bigger than they get when he is called for a questionable foul, and Orlando was wooing him and Grant Hill to change the face of a franchise.

Back in Texas, a man with a gruff exterior and a social-studies-teacher wardrobe was helpless. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich probably wouldn't have admitted then that he had really grown attached to that kid. It wasn't just that Duncan was 7 feet tall and did things so effortlessly. Duncan and Popovich had become soul mates. They were complete opposites. Popovich was a connoisseur of fine wine; Duncan drank soda. Duncan played video games; Popovich barely knew how to turn on a computer.

Duncan did not plan a TV show to announce his intentions. He went home to San Antonio, and the same questions kept floating through his head. What are you doing? Why would you mess with something so great?

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Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich have been together for 16 years, and it's the greatest love story in sports. They collaborate and lean on each other, win championships together, then comfortably fade into the anonymity of the NBA's third-smallest TV market.

It's not a love full of hyperbole or flowery prose. Duncan and Popovich have this game-day ritual. Popovich takes a seat on the bench alone at halftime, while the rest of the arena is scrambling or shooting or going for a beer, and then Duncan plops down near him. They stare at the ground. Usually, they say nothing. They've been doing this for years, and everyone has different theories as to why.

"They both are probably thinking the same thing," said New Orleans Pelicans (http://espn.go.com/nba/team/_/name/no/new-orleans-pelicans) coach Monty Williams, who played with Duncan his rookie year. "Whatever that is, I don't know."

"Pop is old and so is Tim, and they both need to get their rest," former Spurs guard Brent Barry (http://espn.go.com/nba/player/_/id/42/brent-barry) joked, then offered a more serious explanation.

"You have two sets of eyes on you as you're finishing off the task at hand. You have the coach, but then you have the coach's first son. Your older brother. Kind of the man of the house with Dad's car. And Tim is watching over and kind of quietly assessing what you're doing, and nothing really needs to be said."

Duncan and Popovich have won four titles together in 16 years and are in a tug-of-war with the Miami Heat (http://espn.go.com/nba/team/_/name/mia/miami-heat) for No. 5. They are so bonded that Popovich said earlier this spring that he'll retire when Duncan does.

No player and coach in the history of the NBA, or even the NFL, have been together longer. New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who has teamed up with Bill Belichick for one of the biggest dynasties in football, was just a sophomore backup at the University of Michigan when Duncan and Popovich got together. Phil Jackson was winding down an eight-year run with Michael Jordan (http://espn.go.com/nba/player/_/id/1035/michael-jordan). "I think it speaks to the character of both of them," Jackson said of Duncan and Popovich's longevity.

Their relationship has been called everything from friendship to father-son to a marriage. Neither is interested in analyzing it, especially now, in the final push for another ring.

But they're intensely private men anyway, which makes it tough to fill news cycles in San Antonio. One local TV station was so desperate it recently ran a slideshow on its website of pets wearing Spurs gear. (The lapdogs and kittens were more revealing than Popovich.) Just before the NBA Finals started, the coach was asked to give his first impressions of when he met Duncan. "He was tall," Popovich said, then walked away.

Perhaps if they opened up more, they would reveal secrets they don't want anyone to know. Such as that their chemistry makes everything seem easy.

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It has been said that Tim Duncan was so agreeable, so good, that he could've been coached by anybody. He had long arms, a beautiful bank shot and a toughness that belied his sinewy frame. There was a purity and genuineness about him, almost as though he'd been untouched by the entitlements that come to someone who knows at a young age that he's better than everyone else.

Read more at http://espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2013/story/_/id/9394866/san-antonio-spurs-love-story

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Career Arc: Tim Duncan, Part 1

The Duncan Show has been many things over the past 16 years, but it has rarely, if ever, been boring

by Bill Simmons (http://grantland.com/contributors/bill-simmons/) on June 11, 2013

The San Antonio Spurs picked Tim Duncan on June 25, 1997, about seven weeks before Matt Stone and Trey Parker launched their new animated series on Comedy Central. Sixteen years later, the Spurs and South Park are still chugging along like kindred spirits; in a goofy twist, Duncan’s only fun nickname (“Timmaaaaaaaay”) comes from that show. Both the Spurs and South Park generated so many classic moments over the years, they practically blend into each other now. They were lavished with critical acclaim while being overshadowed by more popular network shows (the Lakers and The Simpsons, respectively). Parker and Stone should have burned out years ago; Duncan should be washed up by now. Nope and nope. Every time they seemed ready to lose their relevance, they rallied back. You know, like right now.

It’s easier to put San Antonio’s unprecedented run in perspective. The Spurs won four titles in nine years. They made two different Finals 14 years apart. They won 70 percent of their games without ever missing a postseason. They never won fewer than 50 games except for the ’99 lockout season (when they finished 37-13). Their three signature players (Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker) have played together 11 years, one away from passing the original Big Three (Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish) as the longest-running three-star alliance. If Duncan and Gregg Popovich capture titles 14 years apart, they will make history; only Bill Russell and Red Auerbach won rings even nine years apart (1956 and 1966).1 (http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-1/#fn-1) If Duncan wins the Finals MVP, he’ll match Kareem as the only player to repeat that 14 years apart.

There’s been a misconception over these past 16 years that Duncan’s Spurs were boring, that America repeatedly rejected them. Uh-oh, here come the small-market Spurs again. Get ready for lousy ratings! It didn’t help that their signature stars never fit into a culture that rewarded cool commercials, YouTube clips and self-created nicknames. Despite unrivaled success, unprecedented continuity, enviable chemistry and innovative thinking, the Spurs never received the same mainstream recognition that, say, the Patriots always did. Gregg Popovich never developed Bill Belichick’s polarizing mystique (nor did he care to). Tim Duncan never became a mainstream celebrity like Tom Brady (nor did he care to). We never argued about the Spurs, and when we did, it always centered on some lame thesis like “Why don’t more people appreciate Tim Duncan?”

Their biggest issue wasn’t their fault: Until this month, they never found the right Finals opponent, someone who brought out the best in them and produced riveting basketball. Remember, the Patriots played five unforgettable Super Bowls against the Rams, Panthers, Eagles and the Giants (twice). Until this month, the Spurs never drew a Finals opponent that made you say, “I can’t wait for this one!” That’s just bad luck, even if that same luck helped them win all four of those series.

Are the Spurs a dynasty? Of course not. More like a compelling television series that churned out an inordinate number of high-level seasons — like South Park, actually. Think of them as The Duncan Show and it makes more sense. The Duncan Show is a lot of things, but it has been rarely, if ever, boring.

THE CREATION: 1996-97

What Happened: The ’96 Spurs won 59 games before collapsing in the playoffs for the umpteenth time, losing a deciding Game 6 in Utah by 27 points (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1008168/index.htm). That triggered a summer of “David Robinson is too nice; you need to be a killer to win titles and he’s not a killer” stories. Which wasn’t untrue.2 (http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-1/#fn-2)

When Robinson missed the first six weeks of the ’97 season with a back injury, the Spurs staggered to a 3-15 start. He returned and immediately broke his left foot, inadvertently murdering their season and thousands of Robinson’s fantasy owners. (Note: I was one of them. You know how many total games Robinson played? Six! I’m still bitter.) After then-GM Popovich fired Bob Hill and took over coaching duties, some mistakenly remember the Spurs tanking for a Duncan lottery ticket. Not entirely true! Injuries decimated them: Robinson, Chuck Person, Charles Smith and Sean Elliott missed a combined 264 games. They finished 20-62; only Boston and Vancouver did worse. Since the expansion Grizzlies were ineligible for the no. 1 pick, the Celtics had a 36.3 percent chance at getting Duncan. San Antonio? 21.4 percent.

You know what happened next.

Hold on, I have to throw scalding acid in my eyes. Just give me one second.

THE DUNCAN SHOW, SEASON 1: 1997-98

Record: 56-26

Playoffs: Round 2, lost to Utah in five

Returning core: David Robinson, Vinny Del Negro,4 (http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-1/#fn-4) Avery Johnson, Will Perdue, Monty Williams, Sean Elliott

New additions: Tim Duncan, Jaren Jackson, Chuck Person, Malik Rose

The Big-Picture Story Line: “Here Come the Twin Towers!!!” As crazy as this seems now, some experts wondered if Duncan and Robinson could coexist. Before the ’97 draft, some Spurs fans argued for Keith Van Horn over Duncan because they already had a center.5 (http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-1/#fn-5) A brief history of NBA Twin Tower duos: Wilt Chamberlain and Nate Thurmond (one Finals trip); Walt Bellamy and Willis Reed (no Finals trips); Kevin McHale and Robert Parish (five Finals trips, three titles); Bill Cartwright and Patrick Ewing (no Finals trips); Ralph Sampson and Hakeem Olajuwon (one Finals trip). Only the McHale-Parish tandem generated rings, but Larry Bird was Boston’s best player for all three titles. Could you actually build around the Twin Towers gimmick?

What Went Right: Not only did Duncan win Rookie of the Year, he became the first rookie since Larry Bird to make first-team All-NBA.6 (http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-1/#fn-6) Meanwhile, the Celtics traded their top lottery pick (Chauncey Billups) after 51 games. Oh, and they passed up T-Mac for Ron Mercer with their other lottery pick. I need a drink.

Read more http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-1/

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Career Arc: Tim Duncan, Part 2

The Duncan Show has been many things over the past 16 years, but it has rarely, if ever, been boring

by Bill Simmons (http://grantland.com/contributors/bill-simmons/) on June 11, 2013

THE DUNCAN SHOW, SEASON 8: 2004-05

Record: 59-23 (second-best)

Playoffs: Won title, beat Detroit in Finals (in seven)

New additions: Brent Barry (four years, $19.6 million), Beno Udrih, Nazr Mohammed

Smartest Big-Picture Decision: With Duncan coming off two mega-usage seasons and a discouraging 2004 Olympic experience — so discouraging that he shaved his head and grew a Dennis Haysbert–esque goatee (http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/001/932/091/51183853_display_image.jpg?1329594601) — Pop finally began protecting Duncan’s minutes (66 games, 33.4 MPG). If you’re wondering how Duncan made first-team All-NBA in Season 16 without a biogenesis clinic being involved, start here. No coach protected his star better than Popovich protected Duncan from 2004 through 2013, with the possible exception of Jerry Sloan and John Stockton.

Most Enjoyable In-Season Story Line: “Here Comes Ginobili!” In the span of 11 months, Manu led Argentina to a 2004 gold medal, made the 2005 All-Star team, earned his own SI feature (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1111649/index.htm), caused me to write (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/050408&num=0), “If I could be any NBA player, I would probably choose Manu if it wasn’t for the whole ‘There’s a 90 percent chance my parents would get kidnapped’ thing,” bastardized the sport with his serial flopping (he’s Patient X of the Flop Era), matured into a legitimate playoff force (20.8 PPG, 51-44-80 splits, 24.8 PER in 23 playoff games) and won over TNT’s Charles Barkley for life.

Most Enjoyable In-Season Story Line for My Wife: That’s right, it’s the Tony Parker–Eva Longoria romance! Suddenly the “boring” Spurs were landing in Us Weekly every week, employing a crossover celebrity and having their nationally televised games get hijacked by shots of Longoria cheering in the stands. They married in 2007 and had a chance to become the one celebrity power couple who wasn’t that annoying. And then this happened.

Best Spurs-Related Quote: Bowen telling Sports Illustrated, “This is the first place I’ve been where they respect what you can do rather than concentrate on what you can’t.” Well said. By the way, this was the season when Bowen turned into a bona fide villain, feuding with Kobe and Ray Allen, tripping guys left and right, and even inspiring me to call him “Blackjack Bowen” (so he sounded more like a WWE heel). Can you really be boring if you have Blackjack Bowen, Big Shot Rob, Ginobili, Parker and the best power forward ever on your team? I say no.

What Went Right Other Than Manu: Strangely, not much other than midseason pickup Nazr Mohammed stealing Rasho Nesterovic’s crunch-time minutes and their Big Three resembling an actual Big Three (52.9 PPG in the regular season, 61.6 PPG in the playoffs). Duncan sprained his ankle in March, then limped through the playoffs at 70 percent. Barry struggled to fit in. Parker suffered a postseason mini-slump lowlighted by Steve Nash and Chauncey Billups outplaying him, as Longoria did everything but start dressing like Kim Basinger in The Natural. Their biggest breaks happened with other teams: C-Webb’s faulty knees killing off the Kings (for the next decade, as it turned out); Kevin McHale screwing up the T-Wolves and earning himself an invite to 2006’s Atrocious GM Summit (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060224); the Lakers rebuilding around a suddenly sullen Kobe; and then, Phoenix’s Joe Johnson breaking his face in Round 2 …

… and Dwyane Wade getting injured during the Eastern finals. Instead of playing Miami and not having home court, San Antonio stumbled into a Game 7 at home against Detroit (which they won). Nobody remembers this now except for Wade, Pat Riley and the Heat’s biggest fan.

Best Spurs-Related Quote in General: After San Antonio throttled Phoenix in five,1 (http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-2/#fn-1) Suns coach Mike D’Antoni gushed, “[Duncan] is the ultimate winner, and that’s why they’re so good … I hate saying it, but he’s the best player in the game.”

Translation: I just threw my own MVP under the bus! (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/050608) That reminds me, Duncan finished in the top five of the league’s MVP voting for the eighth straight season (from 1998 through 2005, he finished fifth, third, fifth, second, first, first, second and fourth). Throw in three titles, two MVPs, the Rookie of the Year, eight straight first-team All-NBAs and three Finals MVPs, and Duncan would have made the Hall of Fame off of those first eight seasons alone.2 (http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-2/#fn-2)

Best Game You Definitely Didn’t Remember: Round 2’s Spurs-Sonics battle ended with a gorgeous Manu-to-Duncan layup in the last second of Game 6, a thrilling finish for a terrific Round 2 series.3 (http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-2/#fn-3) Remember that enjoyable Ray-Rashard-Fortson Sonics team, those raucous Seattle crowds, or Jerome James playing just well enough to rope an overmatched GM into a preposterously dumb contract? (Paging … Isiah Thomas. Isiah Thomas, please pick up the red courtesy phone.) I loved that series. Also, Game 6 was the last Sonics home playoff game ever. Hold on, I’m pouring out a 40.

Best Game You Definitely Remember: The last-ever Big Shot Rob game! After four straight Finals clunkers, the Spurs were trailing in Game 5 in Detroit when … BOOM! Big Shot Rob scored 21 points (including five 3s), unleashed maybe the best in-game lefty playoff dunk ever, drained the game-winning shot in OT, relegated Rasheed Wallace to “How Could You Do That?” basketball infamy (for hopping off Horry to double Ginobili, and by the way, “HOW COULD YOU DO THAT?????”), inspired me to write a glowing postgame column that successfully compared Horry to Nate Dogg (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/050620), and caused Duncan to gush afterward, “That was probably the greatest performance I’ve ever been a part of.” What a game.

Enduring Story Line: “Tim Duncan might be great, but he’s not transcendent.” And that wasn’t totally fair. A gimpy Duncan won his third Finals MVP by default (20.6 PPG, 14.1 RPG, 42% FG, 67% FT), missing 22 of 32 shots in Games 3 and 4, missing six of seven free throws down the stretch of Game 5 (as well as what should been an easy game-winning putback), then gutting out a 10-for-27 in Game 7 that was just good enough. The 2005 Finals could have cemented his “Best Player of His Generation” claim, but physically he couldn’t pull it off (leaving the door juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust open enough for Kobe). Even Duncan admitted afterward, “We can play a lot better, and that’s something horrible to say up here right now as we’re sitting up here NBA champs.”

Futuristic Tangent: Two weeks ago, Bowen told me that 2005 was San Antonio’s best team, followed by me asking, “Why didn’t you guys play better in the Finals?” Bowen raved about the ’05 Pistons, calling them the best defensive team his Spurs ever played. He chalked it up to a failure of styles — two superior teams involuntarily bringing out the worst in each other (from an entertainment standpoint). That backed up my take before Game 7 (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/050622&num=0), when I wondered if defenses were getting too good, worried about shaky officials deciding a championship (something that happened a year later, actually), and wrote, “Much like the Rockets and Knicks in the hideous 1994 Finals, the Spurs and Pistons seem to bring out the worst in one another (only without OJ’s Bronco Chase to lighten the mood).”

Overall contribution to Spurs’ “Boring” Reputation: 10 out of 10. Ratings for Spurs-Pistons dipped 38 percent from 2004’s five-game Pistons-Lakers series, even when you included just the third Game 7 in 21 years. Game 7 morphing into a surreal mix of dramatic, disjointed and weirdly disappointing,(my postgame column (http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/64141/page/nba-130603/sports-guys-vault-game-7th-heaven)) didn’t help matters. Had they played Wade and Shaq, we’d remember the 2005 Spurs more fondly. Alas.

Enduring Story Line: “Anyone but the Spurs and Pistons next year … please.”

THE DUNCAN SHOW, SEASON 9: 2005-06

Record: 63-19

Playoffs: Western semis, lost to Dallas (in seven)

New additions: Michael Finley, Nick Van Exel, Fab Oberto

What Went Wrong: Duncan suffered his worst season (19-11, 48% FG, lowest PER since his rookie year) thanks to an ongoing battle with plantar fasciitis.5 (http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-2/#fn-5) But that’s not what killed the Spurs. Phoenix and Dallas were taking advantage of subtle rule changes that favored penetrating guards, small ball and slash-and-kick offenses (I wrote about it that spring (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060517)), only the Spurs hadn’t totally embraced those novelties yet. Dallas ended up being 0.000004 percent better in a Round 2 bloodbath that featured five nail-biters (Game 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3j0Drhfgw8) and Game 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wANLbsrHGok) were especially good), as well as the Spurs nearly rallying back from a 3-to-1 series deficit. That brings us to …

Best Game You Definitely Remember: Game 7 at San Antonio … or as it’s also known, “The Best Game 7 of The Duncan Show.” You had Duncan at his best (41 and 15) and Dirk at his best (37 and 15).6 (http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-2/#fn-6) You also had Parker and Manu dropping 47 combined, only Manu went from hero (the go-ahead 3 with 32 seconds left) to goat (inexplicably fouling Dirk on the 3-point play that saved Dallas’s season). Dallas took care of business in overtime and that was that. The following is not hyperbole: Because of start-to-finish drama, consistent entertainment, star power, unexpected twists, history-altering significance, excellence of play, sheer rewatchability and such a memorable Game 7, this was THE best professional basketball series of the 21st century. It’s amazing. But yeah, the Spurs were boring.

Enduring Story Line: “Did we just come two plays away from maybe winning four straight titles? Where’s the tequila?”
THE DUNCAN SHOW, SEASON 10: 2006-07

Record: 58-24

Playoffs: Won title, beat Cleveland in Finals (sweep)

New additions: Matt Bonner, Jackie Butler, Francisco Elson, a.k.a. “The Not-So-Big 3″

What Went Right: Pop kept everyone’s minutes under 34.1 or less, fine-tuned his whole It’s A Marathon Not A Sprint philosophy, and started tinkering with more small-ball lineups than ever before. Duncan cruised to fourth on the MVP ballot and mastered the second phase of his career in an evolving league:7 (http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-2/#fn-7) Once upon a time, he was the perfect power forward … now, he was the perfect center. Meanwhile, Golden State shocked the 67-win Mavs in Round 1; the precociously young Cavs shocked Detroit in the Eastern finals; and the Suns became possessed by an evil spirit in Round 2. Hold on, let’s break that last point down via YouTube.

Game 1: Phoenix squanders home-court advantage because Nash butts heads with Parker, then Phoenix’s legendary training staff somehow can’t stop the bleeding on his nose, causing Nash to miss most of crunch time. So if you’re scoring at home, Phoenix’s medical staff can save Grant Hill’s ruined career, coax multiple All-Star seasons out of Amar’e’s ravaged knees, save Steve Nash’s bum back and eke an All-Star performance from an overweight Shaq … but they can’t figure out how to put some freaking Vaseline on a cut.

Read More http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-2/

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Pop And Timmy: Power Couple

What you didn't know about the NBA's best working relationship

By Marc Stein (http://search.espn.go.com/marc-stein/) | ESPN.com

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Seventeen years, four titles, countless memories. It's been a match made in basketball heaven for Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich.

You have to go way back in time, or all the way across the Atlantic, to find a boss/superstar duo that can trump the longevity and success shared by Gregg Popovich and Tim Duncan.

We're talking Honus Wagner and his manager, Fred Clarke, whose 19-year collaboration began in 1897. Or Sir Alex Ferguson and Ryan Giggs, winners of 13 Premier League titles in their 23 seasons together.

The ever-efficient San Antonio Spurs quietly prefer the comparison they've been known to make internally -- Bill Belichick and Tom Brady -- but even the NFL's signature coach/franchise player partnership hasn't been at it as long as the NBA's modern-day Red and Russell.

"I'm jealous of Tim," Kobe Bryant tells ESPN.com, "playing for the same historically great coach for his entire career."

"When you look at what Russell and Auerbach did, now that's a whole different stratosphere," says ESPN's Avery Johnson, former point guard and captain for Popovich, as well as Duncan's former teammate. "It was a different time. But I will say this: They're not far behind.

"They were not in a Boston or a Chicago, like Michael [Jordan] and Phil [Jackson], or an L.A. You're talking about doing what they did in San Antonio."

We're talking about it again because the Spurs are tantalizingly close to another NBA Finals appearance. Provided they find a way to survive this almighty struggle with their uberathletic nemeses from Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals, it would be the sixth time Pop and Timmy lead the team from the league's fourth-smallest TV market onto the sport's biggest stage, chasing their fifth title together to pull even with Bryant's haul.

Kobe, Avery and many others have been asked in recent weeks to talk about the Spurs to help us in our unending quest, after all these years of concealment, to get a better sense of how the man steeped in military intelligence and his own QB for 17 years (and counting) really operate.

The following collection of vignettes was culled from more than two dozen interviews this postseason with those who know Popovich and Duncan best and have studied them the longest. So consider this your primer on the NBA's Power Couple and the uniquely chaos-resistant empire they've built with the help of Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.

Chief among those Duncovich experts is R.C. Buford, who has headed up San Antonio's front office for the bulk of this run and contends that the duo's connection is even closer than you think.

"Soul mates," Buford says, "is not too strong a statement to make about these two people."

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Before Pop was Pop, he had to fight for his coaching future in the NBA.

POP IN PERIL

Maybe Pop is right. Maybe any coach's system would have worked in San Antonio after two trips to the draft lottery -- one in 1987 and the next in 1997 -- delivered David Robinson and Tim Duncan.

Or maybe the Spurs' story would have been totally different had they lost a regular-season road game to the Houston Rockets on March 2, 1999.

That was during the NBA's first lockout season, which was shortened to 50 games by a work stoppage that nearly consumed all 82. It was also Duncan's second season as a Spur, laden with championship-or-bust expectations, only for the Spurs to stumble from the start to a worrisome 6-8 record.

A popular former Spur named Doc Rivers also happened to be a member of San Antonio's broadcast team in those days. The fans' clamor for Rivers, who was already being billed as a coaching natural, to replace that what-has-he-ever-done Popovich got louder with every loss suffered during the slow start.

But by the time the Spurs were headed to Houston for the 15th game of a truncated schedule that left no time for early slumps, pressure on Pop wasn't coming solely from the public or the media. The belief among many of Pop's players was that the coach was on the brink of being fired. Or being forced, at the very least, to return to a GM-only role.

"It was different from the regular pregame," former Spurs forward Malik Rose said, rewinding back to the game in question against a Rockets team headlined by Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen.

"David [Robinson] usually didn't say much beyond a prayer in the huddle when we brought it all in, but [before this game] David was saying, 'We've got to get it together, we've got to do this, this is a big game.'

"If we lost that game, they were going to fire Pop and bring in Doc ... that was the rumor. I would have to say it was real because of the gravity in the locker room. I'll never forget it."

Said then-Spurs guard Steve Kerr: "I can't say I felt like he was close to getting fired, but there was a lot of discomfort with the way things had started [that season]. Pop wasn't Pop yet. He didn't have a name. The fans still didn't really know who he was."

It's true, kids: Pop wasn't anywhere near his current Godfather of Coaching status in Duncan's early years. It took two championships to start making the locals forget the controversial timing of the dismissal of the popular Bob Hill, who was fired just as Robinson was getting healthy. It realistically took three titles before anyone was really ready to put Pop on a one-name level with Phil and Riles.

Which is among the reasons that Johnson, Pop's point guard and the most vocal of leaders on that Spurs team, says today that he has no doubt that Houston game was the ultimate must-win for the third-year head coach.

"Absolutely," Johnson says. "Things had been communicated to us. It was really real.

"There was a lot of noise about Pop being potentially replaced by Doc, so David [Robinson] and I went to Pop's house before we got on the flight to go to Houston. Pop talked to us and ... what I will say is we came out of there feeling so strongly about Pop that we knew we had to go win that game."

"You might want to go look at the numbers," Johnson added, "of what we all did [against Houston]."

The oft-maligned Johnson duly posted 18 points and 13 assists. Robinson chipped in 15 points, 9 boards and 3 blocks. And young Duncan racked up 23 points, 14 boards and 5 swats in San Antonio's 99-82 rout.

The win launched a 31-5 surge for the rest of the regular season that carried the Spurs into the playoffs on a run that would ultimately deliver the first NBA championship in franchise history. So they eventually found a way to live with Phil Jackson's subsequent barbs about how a title in a lockout-shortened season should have been accompanied by an asterisk, because that sort of slam -- one of the most famous digs in the longstanding Phil-versus-Pop rivalry -- was nothing compared with how perilous things had looked and sounded as recently as that same spring.

"I don't know that I'd say the end was near," said longtime Spurs assistant coach Mike Budenholzer, now coach of the Atlanta Hawks. "But there was a real concern that we weren't meeting expectations. It was real. It was genuine. We knew we needed to start playing better and start playing better soon. So I would say it was real."

Said Johnson: "At the end of the day my allegiances were to Pop because he had put such great faith in me. I felt if he would have gotten fired [after replacing Hill], I'd have been one of the reasons he got fired, because I wasn't viewed as a starting point guard that could lead a team to the championship. So I really took that personal. [And] it was the most passionate pregame speech David ever gave. He was foaming at the mouth."

http://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=/photo/2014/0528/nba_spurs17-07_1296x729.jpg&w=924&h=520

Read More http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/10955188/gregg-popovich-tim-duncan-stories

[gnsf0946]

"DUNCAN AND POPOVICH: A LOVE STORY"

"Pop And Timmy: Power Couple"

sounds gay

[lefty]

yawn

[wildbill2u]

The Career Arc Part 1 & Part 2 are the best sportswriting about the Spurs teams since the acquisition of Duncan that I've ever read. Complete with lots of videos and related articles that are linked within the main articles. Hours of great stuff from Bill Simmons you can savor. Surprisingly it isn't all about Duncan as it morphs into a long history of the Spurs Dynasty.

Forget about the book Dynasty. It's a rush job of newspaper clips IMO. Why pay for dreck when you can get gold for free?

[scanry]

Johnny Ludden wrote far better articles than Simmons, Stein and Woj tbh. You should read the ones he wrote from 2002 - 2007.