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Here's how a defense of small ball might go:
One of Dallas' four-headed centers is always on the court: Diop, Dampier, Mbenga, or Van Horn. Now let's say you eschew small ball and play Rasho a 20-30 minutes per game. Who's he going to guard? Putting him on Dirk would be a laughing stock. You can't stick him on Diop either, because that leaves Duncan to guard Dirk. If you want to put Bowen on Dirk, that forces Duncan to guard Howard or Griffin if Rasho's on DeSagana. Duncan on Dirk still allows Dirk to score in the 25-30 range (since Duncan really can't take away Dirk's drive to the hoop from the elbow and can't jump high enough to block that driving layup), wears out Timmy, and likely gets him into foul trouble. We saw this in the last 4 minutes of game 3, when Tim got stuck guarding Dirk (because Bowen was in serious foul trouble) and Tim fouled him twice, numbers 5 and 6. Duncan on Howard is even worse, since Howard can blow right by him and step out for long range jumpers, pulling Tim out of the paint and forcing Rasho to get all the defensive boards. So playing Rasho means he has to guard either Diop or Dirk, and neither of those scenarios is any better than starting Bruce at PF and putting him on Nowitzki.
The only other option is to give Nazr the lion's share of the minutes at 5. Nazr is a better (offensive) rebounder than Rasho and he's more athletic. Nazr is more inept on offense than Rasho, and he is (arguably) a worse defender. Rasho plays good one-quarter post position defense, is a decent shot blocker, and has a mid-range jumper than garners just a little bit of respect. The problem with Nazr isn't as much in the x's and o's as it is in the head. Nazr played well (by his standards) in the two regular season victories against the Mavs, averaging 10 ppg, but had not been playing very well during the playoffs (excepting Game 1 against Sacramento, a game in which even I would have played 20 minutes and shot 8-8 from three if I had been wearing a Spurs uniform). The one game where he got any significant time (Game 2), he had 4 fouls and 1 point in 12 minutes. With Nazr, you still have problems matching him up against Dirk or Howard, and he had that deer-in-headlights look when he did get in the game. Maybe being in Pop's doghouse wrecked his confidence, or not getting consistent minutes hurt his rhythm or whatever, but regardless of the reason, he wasn't mentally prepared to play against the Mavs in the playoffs, whereas Finley was. Add that to the matchup problems, and I think it makes a lot of sense to nail him to the bench.
Both Nazr and Rasho would have helped the Spurs rebounding, which by all accounts was atrocious against Dallas. They might have even denied Devin Harris a lay-up or two with their long arms. But I think it's ironic that those who criticize small ball point to the lack of defense, when sticking with the big lineup would have actually resulted in worse individual defense on Howard, Griffin, and/or Dirk.
Now I know it sucks that the Spurs had to conform to another team because the matchups just didn't work out in their favor. It's tough to swallow a complete change of mentality in the playoffs, especially when it fails to ensure victory. But you loved it last year when the Spurs annihilated the Suns by refusing to defend Amare and letting him average something ridiculous like 37 ppg while shooting a bunch of one-pass threes in transition. And if you honestly look at the Spurs' roster and compare it to the Mavs' rotation, you can see why the characteristic defense-first approach of the Spurs was inappropriate to use against this Dallas team. Maybe one different piece, like an athletic big who could play D or a long 3 who could shoot, would have changed everything and allowed the Spurs to force the Mavericks to alter their game plan. But with Parker, Ginobili, Finley, Bowen, Duncan, Barry, Horry, Van Exel, Mohammed and Nesterovic, you have to go small.
No way I call that any deficiency on Duncans D.
