Spurs Could Be Viewing the Birth of a Dynasty

As Buck Harvey wrote for today’s San Antonio Express-News:

Of all the luck. Kobe Bryant doesn’t have a college graduation ceremony to attend tonight (understandable, since he doesn’t have a college).

But if the Spurs wonder why a cloud wearing No. 8 hangs over them, there’s another side to the timing. The Spurs at least got him early when he’s potentially beatable.

Wait a decade. What happens when kid Kobe really grows up?

In another dozen years, if Kobe holds all scoring records in the SBC Center, the Spurs will see how blessed they were. They once got to beat up Kobe before the new era started.

Then, in 1999, Kobe went to the free-throw line in the final minute of another Game 2 against the Spurs. The Lakers had been through a lot that season--everything from Rodman to Rambis--but were still in position to even the series.

‘We had a chance,” remembers Kobe, and that alone tells of the talent Phil Jackson inherited. Even those incomplete, J.R. Reid-ish Lakers were strong enough to push the eventual champs.

Then came Kobe at the line. One miss, then another, and Kobe turned toward his bench with a startling reaction.

He smiled.

Did he figure Jordan would have, too? Or was it the expression of a 20-year-old who didn’t know how to act when he failed?

Maybe Kobe grinned because he had seen the future. He laughed about that Sunday, about how his misses worked out just fine. “Who knows?” he kidded. “If we hadn’t been swept, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten Phil.”

As Kobe said these words in the Alamodome, Shaquille O’Neal walked by, tapped Kobe and restated the recently created nickname.

“What’s up, Idol?” asked Shaq.

Shaq once called Bryant other things. But that is the course of a relationship dictated by a stat sheet. When Bryant shoots 35 times and wows the world, Shaq calls him Idol. When he shoots 35 times and the Lakers lose, then Shaq calls him Idiot.

At least Shaq is consistent. In “Shaq Talks Back,” he dedicated a chapter to Kobe.

From a passage: “One day Phil’s gonna have enough confidence in [Kobe] where it’s gonna be his team, and I’ll accept that because it should be a guard’s team.” Get ready, Shaq.

After Kobe finished off Sacramento with 48 points on the road and followed with 45 against the Spurs, also on the road, exactly whose team should it be?

Maybe Shaq doesn’t see that Kobe is his godsend, that he has perhaps only four prime seasons left, and he will eventually lean on his own Jordan. By then Kobe will still be only 26 and--it’s scary--just entering his prime.

Given time, all projections could change. The same trade demands that were there a few months ago could come as quickly as the switch from Idol to Idiot.

And that’s the luck of the Spurs. They caught them two years ago, on the cusp, and they catch them now, with a dynasty forming but still uncertain. So the Spurs can win tonight. They can still change this series, and they can even force Kobe to wait another year or two.

But over this decade?