Spurs keep doing it their way

Not you guys again.

The Lakers can rise, fall and rise again, as they just did in 10 years, but there’s one dark-clad scourge they can always count on, timeless as Dracula and no more fun.

Yes, it’s the San Antonio Spurs, in the same old black-and-silver uniforms they could market as retro, if they had ever changed them.

If the Spurs have aged, they’re still looking better than anyone else who was around when they won the first of their four titles in 1999.

With one exception -- the Lakers -- they’re also better off than any of the teams that arose in the time it took them to win their fourth title in 2007.

The Spurs, who play the Lakers today at Staples Center, have the scars to prove it too. Even by their standards, this season’s 2-7 start, with Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker out, was harrowing.

At one point, Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich found himself in a huddle with George Tolliver, George Hill, Desmon Farmer and Roger Mason, and joked, “Who are all you guys?”

After it broke up, Tim Duncan stayed behind to introduce himself.

“Tim Duncan,” he said, extending his hand. “I’ve been here 12 years.”

It was so them. Other teams get giddy when they win and disconsolate when they lose.

Whatever happens, the Spurs do the same thing: They persevere.

“We’ve had several years when we started slowly,” Popovich said from San Antonio, “but this was a little scarier because we didn’t know how Manu was going to come back.

“He’s been hurt before but this was an operation. When they said ‘operation,’ we said, ‘Is he going to be Manu when he comes back from it?’ ”

If Ginobili isn’t back, he’s on his way, as the Lakers noticed when he dropped 27 points on them in their recent loss in San Antonio.

The Spurs may not have been around forever, it just feels like it.

The Democrats were in the White House when they won their first title, were said to have vanished off the face of the Earth by the time they won their fourth, and are now back in the White House.

Meanwhile, every other NBA power crumbled, including:

* The Shaquille O’Neal-Kobe Bryant Lakers, who won titles in 2000, 2001 and 2002 but, as you may have heard, broke up in 2004.

* The Sacramento Kings, who got old (Vlade Divac), hurt (Chris Webber), or left for financial reasons (Peja Stojakovic, Mike Bibby).

* The Phoenix Suns, whom no one could guard, until they got a new owner, brought in Shaq and became generic.

* The Dallas Mavericks, the winningest team over a three-year span from 2005 to 2008, who were matchup nightmares for the aging Spurs until trading Devin Harris, their answer to Parker, and becoming generic.

The Spurs don’t boast, feud, blame referees, say the word “disrespect,” protest at being called a boring team that murders TV ratings.

They don’t say anything too colorful, or face the Wrath of Pop. If one ever ripped a teammate, Popovich might tear the S-A-N A-N-T-O-N-I-O off his warmups.

If their kingdom is not of “SportsCenter,” the admiration they enjoy is seen in all their people hired as coaches and GMs: Cleveland’s Danny Ferry and Mike Brown; Phoenix’s Steve Kerr and Terry Porter; Oklahoma City’s Sam Presti, Portland’s Kevin Pritchard, Chicago’s Vinny Del Negro, former Mavericks coach Avery Johnson, former Thunder coach P.J. Carlesimo. (Boston’s Doc Rivers is a fringe Spur, having done color commentary for the team before going into coaching.)

If that’s understandable, so is the backlash around the league against the so-called “Spurs Way.”

Almost to a man, the former Spurs are well liked. If it’s natural they talk to each other and hark back to a Spurs “model,” the problem is, that’s nothing more than well-known principles, like putting the team first and playing defense.

What is special are the Spurs themselves: Popovich, Duncan, David Robinson and everyone who followed their low-key, self-effacing example.

Their entire philosophy comes from a quote from 19th Century social activist Jacob Riis, which Robinson found and is now posted in the dressing room in English, French, Spanish, Serbian and Turkish.

Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two. . . . It was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

No actual Spur would say the words, “Spurs Way.” When Popovich is asked how they did it, he says they won two lotteries, leaving out the system he put in and the people he trained, like General Manager R.C. Buford, who could have left and quadrupled his salary years ago, and the draft picks of Parker and Ginobili.

No one ever talks about it, but the only other teams with four titles in nine seasons since the shot clock are the greatest of all time, the ‘60s Celtics, ‘80s Lakers and ‘90s Bulls.

All passed the test of time, which is way too long for the 24/7 news cycle.

Like those teams, the Spurs reinvent themselves as they go, and they aren’t gone yet.

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mark.heisler@latimes.com