nkdlunch
05-29-2007, 01:49 PM
The Debriefing: The Spurs Do Not Deserve Your Scorn
Posted May 21st 2007 9:00AM by mjd
Filed under: Spurs, NBA Playoffs, Featured Stories
http://www.aolsportsblog.com/2007/05/21/the-debriefing-the-spurs-do-not-deserve-your-scorn/
As there is with anything or anyone who dares to be great, there's a strong fan backlash against the San Antonio Spurs right now. But it doesn't feel like your normal we're-just-tired-of-them, New England Patriots-style backlash. It's more visceral. It's more hostile.
It strikes me as odd, because before the 2007 playoffs, no one hated the Spurs. They were the Winnie the Pooh of the NBA ... soft and harmless. If you felt anything towards Tim Duncan and his little friends, it was probably some combination of indifference and boredom. Now there's hatred flowing, and even more bizarre than that, there's a belief that they're a dirty team; a team of thugs, a belief that is so far out there. The Spurs are to thuggery as Celine Dion is to thuggery.
I thought maybe we should take a look at the reasons for the brand new animosity, and hopefully discard some of them so you don't have to spend the next two weeks getting a headache every time the Spurs win. From what I can gather, there are seven new reasons for the Spurs hatred. Let's plow through them.
1. Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire were suspended. No one likes the circumstances under which the Spurs won Game 5, including the Spurs themselves. I'm sure they'd rather have played the entire series at full strength (they'd have won anyway), and I'm sure they'd rather not deal with anyone putting an asterisk at the end of their win, or seeing the series as somehow tainted.
It's not like P.J. Carlesimo was behind the Suns bench with a cattle prod, jamming it in to the rectal cavities of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw, making them get up and run. And it's not like Francisco Elson is the NBA's punishment czar. It may have been unfair, it may have been unfortunate ... but you can't pin it on the Spurs.
If you want to be mad at the NBA for having a dumb rule, fine, and if you want to get mad at Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire for leaving the bench, even better. But even if you think the suspensions were the most heinous thing to happen to basketball since the '98 Knicks, it's still not the Spurs fault.
2. Bruce Bowen is dirty. Well, yes. Bruce Bowen is dirty, maybe the dirtiest of all-time. Even Bill Laimbeer, recognized as the gold standard for basketball filth, did things that were designed mainly to piss people off. Bowen seems intent on actually crippling people.
But why is it just an issue now, when Bowen's been a dirty player for a long time? He kicked Ray Allen in the back, he kicked Wally Szczerbiak in the face, and he's got a long, long, long history of sticking his feet under the feet of jumpshooters returning to the ground.
Bowen had a history, long before he undercut Amare Stoudemire from behind and kneed Steve Nash in the coin purse. But it was just a history of violence, not necessarily a history of fan hatred. Now, all the sudden, he's basketball's Bill Romanowski. It's like getting mad at O.J., but not until he wrote that If I Did It book.
3. Tony Parker is French. You can't hold someone's Frenchness against them. Unless you're Bill O'Reilly.
4. Tim Duncan is a whiner. Duncan does his share of complaining, but if he's going into the "whiner" category, so is 75% of the NBA. Yes, he makes the gigantic "not me!" eyes, and yes, he's always indignant about his purity and innocence. But he's not the screaming and cursing type, he at least always seems respectful of officials and there's only one recorded incidence of an official wanting to fight him.
5. Robert Horry did a terrible thing to Steve Nash. He did. It was a hard and unnecessary foul. But it's not like we're talking about Anthony Mason here ... this is not a guy with "THUG LIFE" tattooed across his abs in big gothic letters. Robert Horry wants to be in a physical altercation about as much as Gregg Popovich wants to sing backup vocals for the Pussycat Dolls.
Horry screwed up on this one play, but what, now we're going to treat him like the next coming of Charles Oakley? Come on. Robert Horry is as harmless as it gets.
6. Fabricio Oberto is ugly. :lmao He is VERY UGLY! Oberto could hold an entire 12-pack of Red Stripe and still not be beautiful. But if we're going to hold ugly against people, then Scottie Pippen has to give all his rings back. :lol
7. Manu Ginobili flops and cries. Listen, I hate the flopping, too, but every team has a flopper. Steve Nash flops, Shawn Marion flops, Raja Bell is in the elite class of NBA floppers (Dwyane Wade is still untouchable at the top, though). Flopping is a leaguewide epidemic, and it's not exclusive to the Spurs or the Suns. Maybe Ginobili's among the worst, but he's not alone in this crime.
These are the reasons that come up, but it's that easy to make a similar list about any team in the NBA. I don't want to tell anyone who they can or can't like, but the anti-Spurs sentiment is raging right now when they're the same harmless team they were a year ago.
Which brings us to the real reason people don't like the Spurs, even if they're aware of it or not: the Spurs are the biggest obstacle standing in the way of a small ball revolution.
An inferior brand of small ball just toppled the Mavericks. But the superior brand has never been able to get past the Spurs. It might never be able to get past a smart, defensively responsible team with a truly dominant big man, but after Tim Duncan, how many of those are left?
The Suns, and to a lesser extent, the Warriors, have spoiled us. We all got high on fast breaks, quick shots and huge point totals. And if it wasn't for Greg Popovich's evil creation, we'd all spend our evenings watching James Jones hit open transition three-pointers, eating buckets of ice cream and giggling like four year-olds watching the Muppet Babies while sniffing nitrous oxide. :lol
But that's not the reality. The Suns play their style of basketball, maybe as well as it can be played. And everyone loves them, and everyone loves 220-point games, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Except for the fact that it can't beat the Spurs.
Posted May 21st 2007 9:00AM by mjd
Filed under: Spurs, NBA Playoffs, Featured Stories
http://www.aolsportsblog.com/2007/05/21/the-debriefing-the-spurs-do-not-deserve-your-scorn/
As there is with anything or anyone who dares to be great, there's a strong fan backlash against the San Antonio Spurs right now. But it doesn't feel like your normal we're-just-tired-of-them, New England Patriots-style backlash. It's more visceral. It's more hostile.
It strikes me as odd, because before the 2007 playoffs, no one hated the Spurs. They were the Winnie the Pooh of the NBA ... soft and harmless. If you felt anything towards Tim Duncan and his little friends, it was probably some combination of indifference and boredom. Now there's hatred flowing, and even more bizarre than that, there's a belief that they're a dirty team; a team of thugs, a belief that is so far out there. The Spurs are to thuggery as Celine Dion is to thuggery.
I thought maybe we should take a look at the reasons for the brand new animosity, and hopefully discard some of them so you don't have to spend the next two weeks getting a headache every time the Spurs win. From what I can gather, there are seven new reasons for the Spurs hatred. Let's plow through them.
1. Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire were suspended. No one likes the circumstances under which the Spurs won Game 5, including the Spurs themselves. I'm sure they'd rather have played the entire series at full strength (they'd have won anyway), and I'm sure they'd rather not deal with anyone putting an asterisk at the end of their win, or seeing the series as somehow tainted.
It's not like P.J. Carlesimo was behind the Suns bench with a cattle prod, jamming it in to the rectal cavities of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw, making them get up and run. And it's not like Francisco Elson is the NBA's punishment czar. It may have been unfair, it may have been unfortunate ... but you can't pin it on the Spurs.
If you want to be mad at the NBA for having a dumb rule, fine, and if you want to get mad at Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire for leaving the bench, even better. But even if you think the suspensions were the most heinous thing to happen to basketball since the '98 Knicks, it's still not the Spurs fault.
2. Bruce Bowen is dirty. Well, yes. Bruce Bowen is dirty, maybe the dirtiest of all-time. Even Bill Laimbeer, recognized as the gold standard for basketball filth, did things that were designed mainly to piss people off. Bowen seems intent on actually crippling people.
But why is it just an issue now, when Bowen's been a dirty player for a long time? He kicked Ray Allen in the back, he kicked Wally Szczerbiak in the face, and he's got a long, long, long history of sticking his feet under the feet of jumpshooters returning to the ground.
Bowen had a history, long before he undercut Amare Stoudemire from behind and kneed Steve Nash in the coin purse. But it was just a history of violence, not necessarily a history of fan hatred. Now, all the sudden, he's basketball's Bill Romanowski. It's like getting mad at O.J., but not until he wrote that If I Did It book.
3. Tony Parker is French. You can't hold someone's Frenchness against them. Unless you're Bill O'Reilly.
4. Tim Duncan is a whiner. Duncan does his share of complaining, but if he's going into the "whiner" category, so is 75% of the NBA. Yes, he makes the gigantic "not me!" eyes, and yes, he's always indignant about his purity and innocence. But he's not the screaming and cursing type, he at least always seems respectful of officials and there's only one recorded incidence of an official wanting to fight him.
5. Robert Horry did a terrible thing to Steve Nash. He did. It was a hard and unnecessary foul. But it's not like we're talking about Anthony Mason here ... this is not a guy with "THUG LIFE" tattooed across his abs in big gothic letters. Robert Horry wants to be in a physical altercation about as much as Gregg Popovich wants to sing backup vocals for the Pussycat Dolls.
Horry screwed up on this one play, but what, now we're going to treat him like the next coming of Charles Oakley? Come on. Robert Horry is as harmless as it gets.
6. Fabricio Oberto is ugly. :lmao He is VERY UGLY! Oberto could hold an entire 12-pack of Red Stripe and still not be beautiful. But if we're going to hold ugly against people, then Scottie Pippen has to give all his rings back. :lol
7. Manu Ginobili flops and cries. Listen, I hate the flopping, too, but every team has a flopper. Steve Nash flops, Shawn Marion flops, Raja Bell is in the elite class of NBA floppers (Dwyane Wade is still untouchable at the top, though). Flopping is a leaguewide epidemic, and it's not exclusive to the Spurs or the Suns. Maybe Ginobili's among the worst, but he's not alone in this crime.
These are the reasons that come up, but it's that easy to make a similar list about any team in the NBA. I don't want to tell anyone who they can or can't like, but the anti-Spurs sentiment is raging right now when they're the same harmless team they were a year ago.
Which brings us to the real reason people don't like the Spurs, even if they're aware of it or not: the Spurs are the biggest obstacle standing in the way of a small ball revolution.
An inferior brand of small ball just toppled the Mavericks. But the superior brand has never been able to get past the Spurs. It might never be able to get past a smart, defensively responsible team with a truly dominant big man, but after Tim Duncan, how many of those are left?
The Suns, and to a lesser extent, the Warriors, have spoiled us. We all got high on fast breaks, quick shots and huge point totals. And if it wasn't for Greg Popovich's evil creation, we'd all spend our evenings watching James Jones hit open transition three-pointers, eating buckets of ice cream and giggling like four year-olds watching the Muppet Babies while sniffing nitrous oxide. :lol
But that's not the reality. The Suns play their style of basketball, maybe as well as it can be played. And everyone loves them, and everyone loves 220-point games, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Except for the fact that it can't beat the Spurs.