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I think there is a difference betweens fans "nemesis" and how the Spurs actually view their opponents.
Spurs have been a contender for so long that they no longer have that "underdog" at ude with the goal of just assembling a team with the best individual pieces they can find and always thinking that "missing piece" will put them over the top.
Spurs management has made decisions in the past that I sometimes haven't understood until a couple of years later. Popular player have been allowed to walk for more money elsewhere and are replaced by players with different skill sets.
They literally seem to look ahead and try to project who the "teams to beat' will be for the next couple of years and literallly try to create a matchup team to counter them.
Every year they go into the season with the unified goal of winning the O'Brien...the goal is not beating Dallas,Phoenix, Lakers etc. specifically, but they try to assemble a team that will matchup with the team they think will be the biggest threat and "go with what they got" against the rest.
Sometimes they guess wrong. The hand-check changed the game and Spurs had to be tweaked. Who could have ever predicted that
Shaq would leave the Lakers and move East? That left the Spurs with a toolbag that needed to be tweaked again.
Spurs just keep the same core group and keep evolving. Thats why the Spurs may be viewed as the main rival by several other teams (notably Dallas and Phoenix now) but they seem to just keep the common thread of playing good solid defense and trying to tweak to match the evolving offensive game with the goal of ultimately winning the championship every year...
no wonder everyone else likes to hate the Spurs LOL.
