Basketball: Best Spurs ever? We'll see

By Marc Stein
ESPN.com
Updated: May 31, 2007, 3:13 AM ET

SAN ANTONIO -- Four more wins and you'll hear it plenty, whether you want to or not: This is the best Spurs team they've ever had down here.

PLAYOFF SCHEDULE

EAST FINALS Detroit 2, Cleveland 2 Game 1: Pistons 79, Cavs 76 Game 2: Pistons 79, Cavs 76 Game 3: Cavs 88, Pistons 82 Game 4: Cavs 91, Pistons 87 Game 5: Thurs., 8 ET at Detroit Game 6: Sat., 8:30 ET at Cle. *Game 7: June 4, 8 ET at Detroit WEST FINALS San Antonio 4, Utah 1 Game 1: Spurs 108, Jazz 100 Game 2: Spurs 105. Jazz 96 Game 3: Jazz 109, Spurs 83 Game 4: Spurs 91, Jazz 79 Game 5: Spurs 109, Jazz 84 NBA FINALS: Game 1: Thu, June 7, at SA Game 2: Sun, June 10, at SA Game 3: Tue, June 12 Game 4: Thu, June 14 *Game 5: Sun, June 17 *Game 6: Tue, June 19, at SA *Game 7: Thu, June 21, at SA *if necessary (All NBA Finals games air at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and ESPN Radio) • The full playoff schedule

You'll naturally also hear about how boring they are and how, uh, grabby they can be, but give San Antonio this:

The Spurs are the first to say that this might be the luckiest team they've ever had down here, too.

"Tonight we caught a break," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich quickly conceded Wednesday, "and we realize that."

It wasn't their first of the postseason, either, as you might have heard. The team from Dallas that Spurs coaches believe was "built to beat us" couldn't get out of the first round. There was a controversial suspension or two, as well as a famously bloody nose, that nudged them along in the second round. Then Wednesday, with Utah's best player forced to pull his sprained right foot out of a protective boot to play this Game 5, San Antonio surged to an effortless 19-point lead in the first quarter and closed the Jazz and a hobbling Deron Williams out with a 109-84 rout.

"They destroyed our will to want to play," Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said.

Lucky and really good.

It's a lethal combination.

You don't win championships without fortune, no matter what. That's probably why Popovich, just as in 2005 when the Spurs clinched their last trip to the NBA Finals, commemorated this victory with almost the same speech he made in Phoenix two years ago about the lottery blessing his franchise.

Asked to explain how the Spurs have positioned themselves to play for a third championship in five years and fourth in nine years, Pop said: "That's an easy equation. It is David Robinson followed by Tim Duncan."

It is a lot more than that, actually, but you know the Spurs. They're so annoying modest, which is yet another reason -- along with the alleged flops, chops and other Uglyball tactics that they use when necessary -- that this team gets tagged with all the boring stuff.

Take a closer look, though, and you'll note that the Spurs cracked 100 points on this night for the sixth time in the last two series, reinforcing their growing Play At Any Pace reputation. They have Duncan looking reborn at 31 -- dominating anew largely because he's as healthy as he's been in years -- and flanked by a seasoned Tony Parker (25) and an increasingly spry Manu Ginobili, who's healthier himself at 29 than he seemed just weeks ago.

Mix in the role players who snap together so nicely -- Bruce Bowen, Michael Finley, Robert Horry and Ginobili's increasingly effective countryman Fabricio Oberto -- and there's little mystery why San Antonio will be comfortably favored to take down whoever wins the East.

"I can't see anybody beating them," Williams said. "I'm not going to say they can't be beat, but they play so well together."

Said Sloan: "They have got guys that know what they can accomplish as soon as they step on the floor. They got a lot of great pieces to a great team."

Best Spurs Ever?

"That's a tough question," said Jazz guard Derek Fisher, who's a pretty qualified judge after numerous duels with San Antonio in his Laker years. "In terms of versatility and the ability to play different styles, I can see why people would say that.

"This team is different [than previous Spurs teams], I can admit that."

With one exception.

It has to feel a bit like 2005 all over again for the Spurs . . . and not just because of the potential Detroit rematch looming.

The Lakers, as they did in '05 with the re-hiring of Phil Jackson, are smothering the playoffs with their latest off-court dramas. As my old Dallas Morning News colleague David Moore joked, San Antonio bouncing a Utah team that took the Mavs' spot in the West finals -- a team that was never supposed to get this far -- ranks as maybe the fifth-biggest story in the league right now . . . behind all of Kobe Bryant's various Trade Me/Scratch That pronouncements.

We'll have to wait a whopping seven days before Game 1 of the Finals -- which can only help San Antonio, in Parker's estimation, because "we've got a lot of old guys" -- to see if these better-than-ever Spurs can win another odd-year championship and move up a spot or two.

"If we don't finish in the next round," Ginobili said, "no one will remember what we did against Denver, Phoenix and Utah."

Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com.

*Disclaimer - Views expressed within this story are not necessarily the views of this Blog