Nostalgic game of the day - 2003 - Spurs @ Lakers - Rodeo Road Trip

[Mr. Body]

People lest not forget, the Spurs were NOT particularly good in the 2002 part of the 2002-03 regular season... they were about on par with today's Spurs, tbh but they really turned it on in the RRT and beyond.

I think there was a point in time around New Year's that year that a lot of us Spurs fans just began to accept that the Spurs just weren't simply good enough to contend that year, were sad for David but excited for the further development of TP, SJ, Manu etc but accepted that the Spurs were a first round out, possibly second round if we got lucky in 2003.

https://www.basketball-reference.com...003_games.html

Duncan was awesome, but there were enough scrappy players on the team who could contribute. D-Rob still had bits left, Malik was hard-nosed, Parker transformed a backcourt that couldn't even get the ball across the timeline against Kobe's defense, Manu was starting to make plays off the bench, and then Stephen Jackson was a wild card. They had to depend on deep bench guys like Kerr in the playoffs, but it was a super-fun ride.

[Millennial_Messiah]

Duncan was awesome, but there were enough scrappy players on the team who could contribute. D-Rob still had bits left, Malik was hard-nosed, Parker transformed a backcourt that couldn't even get the ball across the timeline against Kobe's defense, Manu was starting to make plays off the bench, and then Stephen Jackson was a wild card. They had to depend on deep bench guys like Kerr in the playoffs, but it was a super-fun ride.

It was a super fun ride indeed, against premium compe ion too unlike in '99.

There's no denying that team was mediocre the first 2+ months of the season, but that was part of the fun.