Lakers, Spurs dominated the decade that was
Posted Dec 21 2009 12:33PM
Do you realize that all of these "Best of the Decade" lists and shows that you are reading and watching are a year premature?
A decade doesn't start with Year One. After 12 months, you finish Year One. That means you don't finish 10 years, or a decade, until Year Ten is over. The Oughts Decade runs from 2001-2010, not 2000-2009. So all of these lists should be running in December, 2010.
But I respond to the will of the people, and so, here is an All-Decade list, submitted for your approval. Or, disapproval. You know what to do either way:
[email protected] or Twitter me @daldridgetnt.
Team/Front Office of the Decade (2001-09)
SAN ANTONIO SPURS
Owner Peter Holt, President of Sports Franchises R.C. Buford, Head Coach/President of Spurs Basketball Gregg Popovich
All you need to know about how the San Antonio Spurs do business can be found in their media guide. The players, and their biographies, come first. Then you get the owner and front office bios. That is not the norm; almost every other team puts its owner or ownership group front and center. But the Spurs are different. They've been different all decade, and that's why they're the gold standard in the NBA.
Yes, San Antonio was extremely lucky to win the Tim Duncan Lottery in 1997. But having a superstar is not enough to win four championships in 10 years, as the Spurs have done. Their ability to procure top-notch talent without having other high draft picks, develop that talent and keep that talent without breaking the bank of a medium-sized revenue team puts them head and shoulders above all other teams.
Many will give the Lakers the title of Best in the Decade, and Los Angeles would be a worthy choice. The Lakers took the first three titles of the decade, and if Shaq and Kobe hadn't gone all Days of Our Lives on everybody, they may have won five or six straight. But they did, and the Lakers didn't. Los Angeles has been to more Finals this decade than San Antonio, and with Bryant and Pau Gasol leading the way, the Lakers could be the team of the 10s. But Los Angeles also had three middling seasons after trading O'Neal to Miami, including a 34-48 disaster in 2004-05.
Tim Duncan and Tony Parker with their '07 hardware.
Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty ImagesBy contrast, under Holt, Buford and Popovich, the Spurs have never won fewer than last season's 54 games, won six Midwest/Southwest Division titles (finishing second in the other three seasons), won the three titles and got to five Western Conference finals, and they did so with a payroll that was a fraction of the Lakers' and other top-revenue teams.
Of course, the Spurs reject all such praise.
Told his team was going to be voted the decade's best on Sunday, Buford spent several minutes texting about how good the Lakers have been. Told I wasn't changing my mind, Buford would only say: "We haven't screwed it up that bad."
That's SOP in San Antonio -- a place whose catch phrase is, "get over yourself." It's a Popovich favorite, meaning whatever you think you bring to the party, forget about it. For the Spurs, team and sacrifice trumps everything. It's why Popovich can yell at Duncan, and Duncan doesn't run to the owner or the media to complain. It's why veterans like Michael Finley come late in their careers, knowing they're going to struggle mightily the first year learning Popovich's complex system, especially the defensive rotations. (That's why no one is too worried that Richard Jefferson is struggling so badly. It gets better.)
It's why Popovich can go to Holt, as he did before the 2006-07 season, and said that he -- Holt -- might want to think about making a coaching change, because he -- Popovich -- thought the players were starting to tune him out.
It's why Holt and the ownership group was willing to go deep into the luxury tax this season in order to take one more run at a title.
"Our case, lots of things played out," Holt says. "I get credit, R.C., Pop. But we lucked out on some deals, to be blunt with you. Then we have an ownership group that's strong. No money's come out of that business, ever, at least since 1993. So the debt on the Spurs is way down. And so we as owners have decided for the next couple of years to give us a little bit of a transition period. We're willing to take some (financial) hits. But that's partly because we have so little debt on the business."
It's no coincidence that so many of the Spurs' former executives and coaches have found homes around the league. It's no coincidence that Buford has a close professional relationship with Scott Pioli, who helped build the Patriots' dynasty, and with Mark Shapiro, the longtime general manager of the Cleveland Indians -- who constantly has retooled the Indians when he's been forced to give up on great players his team can no longer afford.
It seems organizations do win championships, after all.
http://www.nba.com/2009/news/feature...ip/index.html#
