has anyone already posted this d@mn article?

[Duncanoypi]

Spurs are NBA chumps
The champs proved one thing: they're the worst of the best
By Eliav Applebaum/Sports Writer



Sound the trumpets, open the drawbridge, unleash the catapults and let the ranting begin.
The greatest game on this planet has been tainted by the San Antonio Spurs.

I kept my cool as the news media from 206 countries tried, unsuccessfully, to hype a mediocre NBA Finals series. It felt more like a six-year old's birthday party caught on home video instead of "Clash of the ans" at the multiplex.

The Spurs aren't great. They're not even that good. They're passable. Adequate. Marginal. Boring. Insufferable. The Chicago Bulls of Michael Jordan's reign would toss San Antonio into a vat of boiling water and dance in circles around the chumps before closely examining the wine list.

These San Antonio Spurs are the worst NBA champions of all time.

They're your 2005 NBA chumps. There. I said it.

Not only were they plodding, they had less intrigue than a Ricky Williams' journal entry from a wild weekend in Miami Beach.

Give me meerkats on Animal Planet. Give me horse flies mating. Give me paint drying. But don't give me the Spurs winning anything.

And before I go any further into the rant, let me make this much clear: I have nothing against any of the individual Spurs personally.

I enjoying taking unnecessary jabs at athletes making oodles of money for putting a little orange ball in a hoop, running up and down a 90-foot slab of wood and treating the rest of the world like a case of the bubonic plague. Cough. Latrell Sprewell. Cough.

The rant is all in the name of fun.

Tim Duncan has less sex appeal than Ozzy Osbourne performing his metal rendition of "Let's Get It On."

Manu Ginobli reminds me of a sniveling Andy Garcia in "Oceans Eleven." I couldn't like the guy, even if he was handing me a roll of $20 bills for checking his luggage at curbside check-in. There were about 347 times during the playoffs that I felt like flicking Ginobli's ears.

Tony Parker is French and he's dating Eva Longoria, two reasons to dislike him. It's freedom fries, right?

Rasho Nesterovic looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy was hit with an ugly stick. Playing next to Duncan, he still couldn't keep his starting gig from ... Nazr Mohammed? All "Rash" needed to do was stand on his tippy-toes and stick his hands high in the air.

The rest of the bunch? They're less distinctive than the wallpaper in the Chevron can off the I-5 in Santa Clarita. You think anybody's going to recite haiku about Beno Udrih in 20 years? Me neither.

The worst part of the whole deal? Robert "Big Shot Blob" Horry now has as many championship rings - six - as Jordan. What a shame. He's a schlub fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time. He's played with Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan in their prime.

These Spurs barely defeated an exhausted Detroit Pistons squad that waddled through the regular season before wheezing and stumbling through the playoffs like geriatric gymnasts. The Spurs couldn't finish Detroit at home in Game 6, a game they should have won with their eyes closed, hands tied behind their back and Bob Knight screaming obscenities in their ears.

Is that the sign of a champion? That's the sign of a reluctant, weak, undeserving champion. The San Antonio Spurs deserve the 2005 NBA championship banner like Mike Tyson deserves another chance boxing on Pay-Per-View.

I like the NBA. Really, I do. And I love basketball. But I want to see more teams employ the Run-'N'-Gun offense. I want at udes, big hair, intense personal rivalries and nasty tomahawk dunks that reinvent the word "posterize."

I want Kevin Garnett, after posting a triple-double on the Lakers - because nobody outside of L.A. likes the Lakers - complimenting TNT sideline reporter Craig Sager for his hideous canary-yellow suit.

I want less talk, more rock.

I want the NBA that I grew up watching. But what I really want for 2005-06 season... the Bulls to win it all.

Hey, a man can dream. And insult the Spurs.

The author is a sports writer for The Reporter.

[Kori Ellis]

Only about 3 or 4 times