The most underrated dynasty in the NBA
Tony Parker,Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan are the backbone of a deep and efficiently coached Spurs squad that has won 20 games on a trot
The Spurs are rolling. After finishing off Utah in 4 games, they disposed off the Clippers in 4 games too. Hardly surprising, considering they are fully healthy. But what is surprising is the way they are completely owning Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder are not playing badly at all. In the second game, Durant scored 31 points, Westbrook scored 27 and Harden 30. Usually, a box score like this means a blowout win for the Thunder, but this time they lost. But more surprising was that the margin of defeat was three times the margin in the first game, in which only Durant had a noteworthy contribution to the game. Thunder are simply being beaten by a better team.
All this talk and the performances of the Spurs is starting a new debate of whether they can go to the next step and become the only team in the NBA to record a flawless post season. It is a feat the Spurs are merely 6 games away from achieving. The longest unbeaten run for a team spanning the regular season and post season was 19 games by the 2001 Lakers, who lost the first game to Philadelphia in the finals. The Spurs have won 20 straight games. The Lakers went on to win the championship that season and it seems highly likely that Spurs will do the same.
The Spurs have always been contenders and, ironically, have always been underdogs. In the 2010-2011 season, in the frenzy of the rising Thunder reaching conference finals for the first time and Mavs sweeping the defending champions en route to winning their first championship, everybody forgot the fact that the Spurs had the best record in the Western conference that year too. But the untimely injury to Manu Ginobili made them vulnerable and the Grizzlies finished them off.
Whenever dynasties are discussed in NBA, there is always one team that is missing. That team is the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs won a remarkable four championships in the eight-year period between 1999 and 2007. Despite this, the Shaq-and-Kobe Lakers that collected three rings are universally recognized as the premier team of that era. The best player on the Spurs team for many years now has been Tim Duncan. He is recognized as the best power forward of all time and one of the top ten greatest players in the history of the game but does not have the flair that you associate with a dynasty, much like Michael Jordan’s incomparable urge to destroy everything in his path or Magic Johnson’s flashy style of play. No, the Spurs have always been methodical, surgically picking apart opponents with crisp passing and collapsing their defense with great precision.
Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker are excellent players, but together the trio of Duncan, Ginobili and Parker can decimate any NBA defence. Indeed, against the Clippers when they were down by 24 points, they were hardly fazed and coolly and calmly finished things off with a 24-0 run to win the game.
In the second game against the Thunder, Greg Popovich was heard saying he wanted to see some “nasty” and that he could see some “unconfidence” in his team. The Spurs responded by shutting out the Thunder and winning the game. If they indeed go all the way, that speech by Popovich will find a place in history as one of the best moments of a superb championship run.
The Spurs are close to winning it all again this season. If Miami Heat manage to finish off Celtics and if Spurs win in the conference finals against Thunder, it will be a rematch of Spurs and Lebron James, whose team got owned in the 2007 playoffs. There is no answer currently to the question as to who can stop the Spurs juggernaut, but if they do manage to remain unbeaten this post season, that will permanently remove the underrated tag people use for them and forever etch them in NBA history as one of the greatest dynasties to have ever existed.