itzsoweezee
06-10-2007, 03:07 PM
sorry if this has already been posted (i did a search)
In the N.B.A., the Good Guys Wear Black
By HARVEY ARATON
San Antonio
David Stern assures me that professional basketball has truly become a business without borders, that the country and the world have been digitally liberated from provincial myopia, forever bound by the wonders of wireless. And I understand what Stern, the media-savvy N.B.A. commissioner, is saying and nod in agreement, but I still find myself confounded by why so few people outside of South Texas seem to appreciate or celebrate the Spurs.
How is it that this team, three victories from its fourth championship in nine years of metronomic excellence going into Game 2 of the N.B.A. finals against the Cavaliers tonight, has not, given all the aforementioned technology, generated more widespread interest and acclaim?
True, Tim Duncan, the Spurs’ best player, generally shuns publicity and is nobody’s idea of the model sneaker pitchman. Their defensive stopper, Bruce Bowen, is occasionally accused of being a dirty player. This spring, Robert Horry stepped out of character to level Phoenix’s Steve Nash, a flagrant foul for which the Spurs wound up being rewarded when key players left the Suns’ bench to respond and were suspended for the next game.
But where is the love for a franchise that thrives on visionary planning, progressive thinking, commitment and continuity? That over the past decade has become the furthest thing from a big-market bully that owes its success to a carnivorous payroll? That has seldom housed me-first braggarts, incorrigible trash talkers, gun toters or pit-bull players?
In San Antonio, the retired David Robinson spent millions of dollars to found and operate a private school for disadvantaged children. Duncan and others blend seamlessly into the city, where people seem to address them all on a first-name basis.
No player’s personal issue is bigger than the team, as demonstrated this season when Coach Gregg Popovich made Manu Ginóbili, a player with All-Star credentials, his sixth man. On the whole, aren’t the loyal and law-abiding Spurs exactly what those most critical of the N.B.A. have said the league has lacked after it embraced the shoe-company-driven agenda of selling style over substance?
“No character issues, professionalism, preparation — everything people always say they want, it’s all happening right here,” the Spurs’ Brent Barry said.
And if these same Spurs happened to play — for argument’s sake — in New York City?
As opposed to their reputation as a drag on network ratings, they would have been hailed by Madison Avenue for reinventing the sport and for being the reincarnation of the Old Knicks with their thinking-man’s approach to the game, their slick, selfless passing and their determined defense. Far from unexciting, the imperturbable Duncan would have been cast as the second coming of Willis Reed.
In New York, these Spurs would have become the toast of the United Nations with their rich blend of international stars, beginning but not ending with Duncan of the United States Virgin Islands, Ginóbili of Argentina and Tony Parker of France.
At least a half-dozen books on their previous championships would have been written. Parker and his Desperate Housewife bride to be, the actress Eva Longoria, would be in paparazzi paradise.
“In a big market, you would have the type of aura that the Bulls had during their championship run,” Barry said. “Like the Celtics and Lakers in the 1980s, that storied feeling nationwide.”
Then again, maybe in the big-city glare, they couldn’t be who they are. Maybe Parker would tire of the attention and want to escape, and Ginóbili wouldn’t go so graciously to the bench.
“I think maybe there’s a little smirk on the coach’s face,” Barry said, “and on the organization’s face, that it’s not that exciting to people outside of San Antonio, that we’re doing it quietly, something special, right here, and we get to enjoy it. That’s really all that counts.”
Ask that coach, Popovich, why the Spurs have been unable to transcend South Texas, and the smirk that Barry has no doubt seen curls its way to the corner of his mouth.
He said he didn’t care if the Spurs were “more or less celebrated,” only a bit too colorfully to be wholly quoted.
“I know that sounds flippant,” Popovich said, “but I’m not trying to be.”
All he can do is run his offense through Duncan’s textbook post game, or send the spellbindingly quick Parker into the teeth of the defense, or unleash the tornado that is Ginóbili. And let others determine why, when the N.B.A. is beamed everywhere by the hydra-headed ESPN, people still think of the Spurs as plodding and predictable, as they were when they won their first title, in 1999.
“That’s their problem, not mine,” Popovich said. “I can’t help them, poor souls. They’ve got to live in their ignorance. I can’t make them keep watching us, but it’s always dumbfounded me, since the arrival of Tony and Manu. If you can’t enjoy watching those two guys play and you don’t understand that they’re as much fun to watch as a lot of other people in bigger markets, then I can’t help, and it means you’re not much of a fan and you don’t understand the game, anyway, and you should probably tune in HBO.”
Reminded that tonight’s telecast will demand a delayed viewing of the “Sopranos” finale, Popovich said, being more funny than flippant, “50-50 I’ll get booted so I can watch it.”
At the Air Force Academy, Popovich majored in Soviet studies, then traveled the world. You wouldn’t be wrong to surmise that his roster is a reflection of his interests, the Spurs’ versatility a mix of military disciplines, softened by Parker and Ginóbili, creative spirits who forced Popovich, as he said, to “let up control.”
Why is their excellence still such a South Texas secret? Why haven’t they been more widely embraced? Maybe we just prefer the bully markets and chest beaters, the Kobe Bryants who distract and blind us with compulsive need.
At the end of the day, what does that say about us?
In the N.B.A., the Good Guys Wear Black
By HARVEY ARATON
San Antonio
David Stern assures me that professional basketball has truly become a business without borders, that the country and the world have been digitally liberated from provincial myopia, forever bound by the wonders of wireless. And I understand what Stern, the media-savvy N.B.A. commissioner, is saying and nod in agreement, but I still find myself confounded by why so few people outside of South Texas seem to appreciate or celebrate the Spurs.
How is it that this team, three victories from its fourth championship in nine years of metronomic excellence going into Game 2 of the N.B.A. finals against the Cavaliers tonight, has not, given all the aforementioned technology, generated more widespread interest and acclaim?
True, Tim Duncan, the Spurs’ best player, generally shuns publicity and is nobody’s idea of the model sneaker pitchman. Their defensive stopper, Bruce Bowen, is occasionally accused of being a dirty player. This spring, Robert Horry stepped out of character to level Phoenix’s Steve Nash, a flagrant foul for which the Spurs wound up being rewarded when key players left the Suns’ bench to respond and were suspended for the next game.
But where is the love for a franchise that thrives on visionary planning, progressive thinking, commitment and continuity? That over the past decade has become the furthest thing from a big-market bully that owes its success to a carnivorous payroll? That has seldom housed me-first braggarts, incorrigible trash talkers, gun toters or pit-bull players?
In San Antonio, the retired David Robinson spent millions of dollars to found and operate a private school for disadvantaged children. Duncan and others blend seamlessly into the city, where people seem to address them all on a first-name basis.
No player’s personal issue is bigger than the team, as demonstrated this season when Coach Gregg Popovich made Manu Ginóbili, a player with All-Star credentials, his sixth man. On the whole, aren’t the loyal and law-abiding Spurs exactly what those most critical of the N.B.A. have said the league has lacked after it embraced the shoe-company-driven agenda of selling style over substance?
“No character issues, professionalism, preparation — everything people always say they want, it’s all happening right here,” the Spurs’ Brent Barry said.
And if these same Spurs happened to play — for argument’s sake — in New York City?
As opposed to their reputation as a drag on network ratings, they would have been hailed by Madison Avenue for reinventing the sport and for being the reincarnation of the Old Knicks with their thinking-man’s approach to the game, their slick, selfless passing and their determined defense. Far from unexciting, the imperturbable Duncan would have been cast as the second coming of Willis Reed.
In New York, these Spurs would have become the toast of the United Nations with their rich blend of international stars, beginning but not ending with Duncan of the United States Virgin Islands, Ginóbili of Argentina and Tony Parker of France.
At least a half-dozen books on their previous championships would have been written. Parker and his Desperate Housewife bride to be, the actress Eva Longoria, would be in paparazzi paradise.
“In a big market, you would have the type of aura that the Bulls had during their championship run,” Barry said. “Like the Celtics and Lakers in the 1980s, that storied feeling nationwide.”
Then again, maybe in the big-city glare, they couldn’t be who they are. Maybe Parker would tire of the attention and want to escape, and Ginóbili wouldn’t go so graciously to the bench.
“I think maybe there’s a little smirk on the coach’s face,” Barry said, “and on the organization’s face, that it’s not that exciting to people outside of San Antonio, that we’re doing it quietly, something special, right here, and we get to enjoy it. That’s really all that counts.”
Ask that coach, Popovich, why the Spurs have been unable to transcend South Texas, and the smirk that Barry has no doubt seen curls its way to the corner of his mouth.
He said he didn’t care if the Spurs were “more or less celebrated,” only a bit too colorfully to be wholly quoted.
“I know that sounds flippant,” Popovich said, “but I’m not trying to be.”
All he can do is run his offense through Duncan’s textbook post game, or send the spellbindingly quick Parker into the teeth of the defense, or unleash the tornado that is Ginóbili. And let others determine why, when the N.B.A. is beamed everywhere by the hydra-headed ESPN, people still think of the Spurs as plodding and predictable, as they were when they won their first title, in 1999.
“That’s their problem, not mine,” Popovich said. “I can’t help them, poor souls. They’ve got to live in their ignorance. I can’t make them keep watching us, but it’s always dumbfounded me, since the arrival of Tony and Manu. If you can’t enjoy watching those two guys play and you don’t understand that they’re as much fun to watch as a lot of other people in bigger markets, then I can’t help, and it means you’re not much of a fan and you don’t understand the game, anyway, and you should probably tune in HBO.”
Reminded that tonight’s telecast will demand a delayed viewing of the “Sopranos” finale, Popovich said, being more funny than flippant, “50-50 I’ll get booted so I can watch it.”
At the Air Force Academy, Popovich majored in Soviet studies, then traveled the world. You wouldn’t be wrong to surmise that his roster is a reflection of his interests, the Spurs’ versatility a mix of military disciplines, softened by Parker and Ginóbili, creative spirits who forced Popovich, as he said, to “let up control.”
Why is their excellence still such a South Texas secret? Why haven’t they been more widely embraced? Maybe we just prefer the bully markets and chest beaters, the Kobe Bryants who distract and blind us with compulsive need.
At the end of the day, what does that say about us?