Finally Looking Sharp, Spurs Dig In for Title Defense

By MARK HEISLER

April 22, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SAN ANTONIO —

Battered is the head that wears this crown.

After all the rejections and humiliations the San Antonio Spurs endured before winning an NBA title, they heard it would be even harder to defend, but it’s one of those things you have to see to believe.

Of course, after one loss in Cleveland, where Coach Gregg Popovich punched out a blackboard and their beloved “Little General,” Avery Johnson, tried to do the same to teammate Malik Rose in a mad scene in which players came running from the showers to pull them apart, resulting in a scrum with several of them in a pile on the floor, the Spurs began to see what everyone was talking about.

Then there was the trade deadline in February, when Johnson, who always had been close to Popovich, learned the coach had tried to trade him for someone who could make a three-point basket or keep an opposing guard in front of him.

These days, the Spurs believe.

A year ago, they finished the season on a 31-5 run and went 15-2 in the playoffs en route to their title. Only the 1983 Moses Malone-Julius Erving 76ers, who went 12-1, ever did better in postseason play.

This time around, the Spurs finished with a modest late-late-season 6-1 surge, closing out with an encouraging 103-98 overtime victory in the finale against the Lakers.

Tim Duncan’s left knee, however, remains a problem.

Duncan suffered a small cartilage tear last weekend at Sacramento and sat out the last four games. The team doctor and Duncan are optimistic but Popovich, no Pollyanna even before this season, is not.

“He’s not going to be totally confident pushing off that thing,” Popovich says. “He’s not going to be 100%.”

In fact, Duncan won’t play in Game 1 and maybe not in Game 2 either.

OK, what else can go wrong? Oh yes, Duncan could leave after the season as a free agent. Everyone in the league has been poised to see how that one turns out.

“I think we have a chance to do really well in the playoffs,” guard Steve Kerr says. “We also have a chance to go out in the first round.

“The regular season usually doesn’t lie. On a rare occasion--Houston won it, finishing sixth [in 1995]. It just doesn’t happen very often. But we have the experience from last year. We seem like we’re going to get everybody healthy. When we’re good, we’re pretty good.”

When they’re good, they can be great, but a lot of things have happened since last spring. Duncan didn’t re-sign, saying he would wait to assess his circumstances as a free agent this summer. Sean Elliott underwent a kidney transplant, launching a search for a replacement that ended only after Elliott, himself, returned to see if he could reclaim his career.

So far, the jury is out on him, as well as his teammates.

“In an odd sort of way, I feel great,” Popovich says. “Well, you say, ‘You don’t have the best record. . . .’

“It’s really irrelevant. These guys are working just as hard as they did last year. . . . We’ve had a couple of people who haven’t had great years, who’ve had injuries out there. We haven’t gotten a consistent rotation yet so it causes some turnovers, it causes some lack of confidence here and there, some mishaps defensively down the stretch in some games. And I understand all that.

“If we get a rotation back at some point here, that’ll help a lot. If we get everybody back healthy and play some games together so the big guys know who the hell is going to be out there, it’ll help a lot. If we don’t get that, well, then we’ll be struggling.”

This just in. Looks like a struggle to the finish.

Elliott’s Back, More or Less

One day you’re a heartwarming story of courage. The next, you’re wondering what happened to your stamina, legs and shooting stroke.

Elliott was the shooter who kept opponents from blanketing Duncan and David Robinson. He defended the opposition’s best mid-size player, even guards like Kobe Bryant. He finally was proving he could step up too, as when he made that tip-toe-above-the-out-of-bounds-line three-point shot that defeated the Portland Trail Blazers and turned the Western Conference finals around.

If losing him wasn’t the tipoff that things would be different, everything that followed, as the Spurs tried to replace him, should have been.

The Spurs say they had a deal with Lamond Murray, but he veered off to Cleveland at the last minute. They offered Tyrone Nesby, another free-agent Clipper, three years at $8 million but the Clippers, to everyone’s surprise, exercised their right of first refusal and dragged, er, brought Nesby back.

The Spurs opened with veteran Chucky Brown in Elliott’s spot, but he was waived by midseason and departed, suggesting Johnson had stabbed him in the back.

“He likes to always make suggestions to Pop, so it’s possible,” Brown said. “I don’t see him on any all-star teams.”

Finally, Elliott, after persuading the doctors and overcoming Popovich’s oft-stated doubts, returned, albeit slowly. He’s averaging 20.6 minutes, scoring six points a game and shooting 36%.

“He’s probably never going to be [what he was],” Popovich says. “We don’t expect him to do what he did last year. That’d be a pretty tall order.

“I think it’s pretty much a miracle that he’s back on the court, so we’re just going to assess this period and see if it’s an overall positive and see if he can handle it medically. Because nobody really know what effect this kind of grind has on somebody in his situation.”

Elliott, ever gracious, discusses his situation night after night. A couple of weeks ago, after the hustling Magic spread the Spurs out and ran by them all night in Orlando, he said he felt as if he’d had “a heart transplant, instead” and was “grossly out of shape.”

Of course, he probably had told himself he would have to be realistic, he couldn’t just walk back in. . . .

“I didn’t really say that to myself,” Elliott says. “I figured I’d be able to get back at some point. I still feel that I can get to the basket. Sometimes I don’t finish, or sometimes I’m tired and I don’t use my legs on my jumper but that will come.

“Some days I feel great. At Miami [on the Spurs’ last eastern trip], I felt terrific. I felt like I could have gone the whole game. Two nights later in Orlando, I felt like a basket case. That part is frustrating but I’m not going to let it get me down. . . .

“I knew it was going to be hard, and it’s been really hard. I really enjoy the challenge. I look forward to every game.”

It’s only that he plays better in some than others. He was in double figures twice last weekend--only his second and third times since returning--but Monday, Vancouver’s Shareef Abdur-Rahim outscored him, 27-6. The challenge continues.

Admiral Sighting Off the Port Bow

Well, at least they can’t pin this one on Robinson.

When the Spurs began struggling, people said Robinson, who had just grown accustomed to his new role as defender-Duncan’s caddie on offense, had to score more.

Robinson was averaging 15 points on Feb. 1 but since has improved to 21. His shooting percentage has risen monthly--50% in February, 54% in March, 56% in April. The bad news was, until recently, it didn’t help.

Shooters like Jaren Jackson, who made so many big three-point baskets last spring--when they were ahead, anyway--iced up. Cantankerous Mario Elie, 36 and in a free-agent season, announced to the bewilderment of all that he would wait until the playoffs to display the nasty side of his persona.

Elie and Johnson had trouble stopping penetration, Popovich noting the new no-touch rules didn’t exactly play to his team’s strengths.

“We’re finding out a lot of new stuff this year,” Robinson says. “There’s no easy games. That’s the biggest thing. You turn on the TV and we watch Orlando lose to the Knicks. Against us, they look like world-beaters, they look incredible.

“So you just know that’s how it’s going to be. It’s been a good challenge. We haven’t been as healthy as we were last year, so that’s been another good challenge for us. We’re learning to overcome a lot of things right now. . . .

“The one thing we have is the confidence. We know we’re very, very good when we play 48 minutes.”

Well, maybe their confidence is seeping back, anyway. It can’t be what it was when they had a 31-5 run last season, or what the Lakers are this season after their 30-1 run, but it’s not too late.

After a key win in overtime last week in Sacramento, where the Spurs came from 17 points behind, Robinson said, “We’re starting to believe in ourselves again.”

Of course, that was before he got to the dressing room and learned Duncan was hurting.

They started the run by defeating the Lakers in Staples--with Shaquille O’Neal out. That was nice for the Spurs and a surprise for Phil Jackson, who had announced he wanted to spare the visitors further illusions by spanking them “soundly.”

Nice, unassuming guys that they are, the Spurs barely noticed.

Popovich called Jackson’s comment “childish.” Robinson smiled when asked about it and said he understood. Elliott said without rancor he knew where Jackson was coming from.

“It’s different going through it without Michael Jordan,” says Kerr, a veteran of two successful title defenses with the Bulls.

“We have a very laid-back team here. We don’t have the type of team where somebody’s going to really kind of take over and hurt some feelings. Michael hurt some feelings at times. He kicked us in the butt. We needed it and he got us going. It’s a different feeling for us.”

Now the Spurs may not even have their most important laid-back guy, Duncan. There’s a different feeling in the Alamodome this spring, all right, and not a happy one. But they can still feel something, so it isn’t over yet.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Worth Repeating

If the San Antonio Spurs do not win the NBA title, they will become the first team since 1987 to not repeat as champion. Before the Lakers repeated in 1988, no team had won consecutive titles since the 1969 Boston Celtics.

YEAR: CHAMPION

1999: San Antonio Spurs

1998: Chicago Bulls

1997: Chicago Bulls

1996: Chicago Bulls

1995: Houston Rockets

1994: Houston Rockets

1993: Chicago Bulls

1992: Chicago Bulls

1991: Chicago Bulls

1990: Detroit Pistons

1989: Detroit Pistons