Heard in the Cheap Seats

Too old.  Too slow.  Not enough offensive firepower.  Play an ugly brand of basketball.  Their time has passed.

Sound familiar?  It should.

These are the standard descriptors most often used when discussing the San Antonio Spurs.  It’s a time-honored tradition of the NBA playoffs–write off the Spurs as a team that can’t possibly get it done one more time.  It’s astonishing really when you put it into perspective.

This is a team that has won four titles in the last decade…a team with probably the greatest power forward to play this game as its anchor.  This is a team that plays at the defensive end of the floor the way the game was meant to be played.  Yet we somehow continue to question the ability of the Spurs to advance in the playoffs for any reason we manage to conjure out of thin air.

I’m not throwing stones here–I am guilty of this as well as evidenced by my prediction of the Spurs’ first round demise.  But since that point, I won’t count the Spurs out of this series or any other from here on out.  This team has a level of mental toughness that no other team remaining in the playoffs can claim with the possible exception of the Detroit Pistons.

This is not a team that is rattled by a 2-0 deficit.  No.  Where some teams make the mistake of believing that the NBA playoffs are about bursts of intensity, the Spurs realize that in order to be the one left standing when all is said and done it is about a consistently high level of intensity.

Just like the Hornets series, last night was a shining example of why the Spurs are never quite dead.  Last night, instead of their marquee player leading them to victory, it was Manu Ginobili leading the charge.  Publicly critical of his own play thus far in the series, Manu answered the call by pouring in 30 points against the vaunted Lakers.

And that is the difference with these Spurs.  Never rattled, the Spurs turned to their second offensive weapon to lead them to victory when the season was on the line.  So like I said, before, until the Spurs lose a game on their home floor, I won’t count them out of any series.  And if it gets to a game 7, old, slow, lack of offensive firepower and ugly basketball will suddenly translate to battle-tested, crafty, controls the tempo of the game and plays lock down defense.  Sounds like a winning formula to me.