Why do we have to put up with like this? It would be so nice to win tonight and see all these assholes eat crow.
SAN ANTONIO – Will 2005 be just another missed opportunity for the Spurs?
If they fall short in Game 7 tonight, they'll have reason to ponder the ones that got away. While the Spurs have two championships to their credit, they easily could have at least five if their postseasons had lived up to their regular seasons.
In fact, a loss in Game 7 would mark the third time in five seasons that San Antonio led the league in average victory margin by a whopping amount but failed to bring home the hardware at the end. Going back further, the Spurs have had at least 56 wins in seven of the past eight seasons (prorating the 1998-99 strike year), and at least 55 wins in 12 of the past 16.
One could argue that a loss would make the Spurs the Atlanta Braves of basketball. Yes, they have the championships, so they can't be compared with the likes of the Buffalo Bills or Minnesota Vikings. But considering the nine division les, the five times they led in victory margin and the two all-time great centerpieces – David Robinson and Tim Duncan – it still seems disappointing.
The postseason frustration goes all the way back to when Pistons coach Larry Brown was in charge of the Spurs in 1990. The Spurs outplayed Portland in a seven-game series but lost in overtime in the seventh game, partly because Rod Strickland decided it would be a good time to throw a blind pass directly over his head and see whether it hit anyone.
That defeat was tolerable because they probably weren't getting past the Bad Boys, anyway. However, a more painful setback came in 1994-95. San Antonio posted the league's best record behind a frontcourt of Robinson and Dennis Rodman, who dominated games defensively like the Pistons' Ben and Rasheed Wallace do today. Unfortunately, Rodman began flaking out in the playoffs and Robinson was outplayed by Hakeem Olajuwon in the conference finals, allowing Houston – a team the Spurs beat five times in six regular-season games – to win the le.
The Spurs broke through with a championship in 1999, but missed a great shot to add to their haul two years later. They again had the league's best record, and their victory margin was even better – equivalent to that of a 65-win team. Yet San Antonio inexplicably crumbled in four games against the Lakers in the conference finals, losing the last two games by 39 and 29 points.
Similarly, the 2004 Spurs followed a championship season by falling to the Lakers in the conference finals – helped by Derek Fisher's miracle 0.4-second shot in Game 5 – after winning the first two games. San Antonio had the league's best victory margin in this season as well, again finishing with 65 Expected Wins.
And now there's 2005. Just as in those other seasons, the Spurs put up prodigious margins of victory – San Antonio had 66 Expected Wins [wtf is this?], one of the best figures in history. Yet instead of us talking about a fifth San Antonio le and comparing the Spurs to the all-time dynasties, we're left wondering how long such a great team can stay stuck on two les.
As with the Braves, this hand-wringing over championships seems a bit much for fans of other clubs to swallow. Two les and several near-misses is a legacy most teams would kill for. But if the Spurs do suffer a setback tonight, San Antonians will lament seeing another chance at a dynasty slip through their team's grasp.
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Stupid MF.
That's not really a good comparison, as the Spurs have two rings. With all due respect to the Admiral, the Spurs never had a championship until we got Tim. That's why I'm sick of people bagging on Tim. Spurs players have come and gone. The one constant over all our championship runs is Tim. Think about it. Almost all of the 99 team was gone for the 2003 final. And we have lost a few players and picked up a few between 03 and 05.
At this point, since we havent won this year, David Robinson was a constant for all our championships as well
Puhlease... The Suns have been labeled the BoSox of the NBA. They've been to the Finals in every decade, or supposedly had an easy road(early 80's) and can't win. ESPN or CNNSI had the article; a good one actually.
It's been know around these parts as "The curse of the coin flip". The Bucks won and got some guy named.... Alcindor...
Spurs are 2 for 2 in Finals, at least until tonight. What are the Braves in the WS, 1 of 5? One more reason it's a BS comparison, but that doesn't stop these fools.
I agree with this article completely. The Spurs are too good to lose to the Pistons tonight and to have people shrug it off and simply say Detroit was the better team. They may be better mentally, but they certainly did not play any better than the Spurs for the first 100 games of their seasons.
A Spurs loss is a collapse plain and simple. They were the more well rounded team than Detroit, the stats and WINS in a much tougher conference prove that. Now its up to the Spurs to prove they have HEART, and don't continually fold under pressure.
I'd rather SA be compared to the Braves than the Marlins, who are 2 for 2 in the World Series. And I don't think the SA/ATL comparison is that unfair in the first place.
The Braves have won fourteen consecutive division les, and the Spurs have won nine in the same span. The Spurs have advanced at least one round ten out of the last 15 years, and the Braves six. SA has lost in the conference finals twice, Atlanta four times (using the same comparison for the NLCS). The thing that throws off a lot of the comparison is SA's crappy history in the second round since 1990: 5-6.
The Braves only won one World Series during the last fifteen years...in 1995, the first season after the MLB strike. Of course, SA won their first le following a strike as well.
other than the comparison to the Braves I have to agree that the Spurs have pissed away alot of chances to win les.
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