Words Seem Inadequate About State of the Spurs

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

Gregg Popovich didn’t call the Spurs soft this time.

He used other words.

He used words such as “belief,” and these words are nicer. Popovich could say: “I have to wonder if way down deep in their guts, if that belief has waned.”

That sounds better than what Popovich said of the Spurs after they lost to Chicago earlier this season. Besides, wasn’t Popovich all but implying Friday night that there still is something way down deep inside?

But this time Popovich might as well have used “soft,” as well as several other choice four-letter words. Because that is the truth. The Spurs did what they have rarely done in the Duncan Era.

And that’s give in.

The Spurs will say, on the record, that the Lakers caused most of this. And they will be mostly right.

The way the Lakers are playing, a healthy right shoulder and three additional inches in height for Derek Anderson wouldn’t make any difference. But don’t stop there with the what-ifs.

What if they had mainlined some youth into Sean Elliott’s knees? If David Robinson and Tim Duncan lined up the planets on the same night? If Avery Johnson played the way he once did, when he made layups? And, naturally, if Terry Porter, Danny Ferry and the other three-point specialists could shoot better than 8.3%?

Would they lose by nine instead of 39?

Maybe these Lakers would prefer to pick the number. Shaquille O’Neal called the Lakers the “best team in the world,” and no one argues with him today.

Shaq was Shaq again. Kobe was MJ again. And then there were the role players. As far as Dereks in this series go, isn’t Fisher the X-Factor?

Robinson talked about how that wore on the Spurs on Friday night. They would hang around, stay within 10 points, then see Kobe dash everything with a dunk or Fisher with a three-pointer.

“We would push back, push back,” Robinson said, “and never get there.”

No wonder Robinson afterward said something he has rarely ever had to say. “It was a total dismantling,” he said, “of our team.”

That’s where the soft/belief stuff comes. It takes two for a total dismantling.

As for a few words on Popovich himself: Yes, coaching is at play in this.

So this is a group thing. The Spurs have gone from the Memorial Day Miracle to the Memorial Weekend Massacre. They’ve gone from losing by 14 to 7 to 39.

Soft?

“I was very surprised [by the blowout],” Bryant said.

Belief?

‘They seemed tired and fatigued,” Phil Jackson said.

So there are a lot of words that could describe these Spurs. Popovich stuck to his. He went back to a first-half layup miss by Johnson, and he said maybe it altered the scoreboard less than it did the mentality of the Spurs.

“As a group,” Popovich said, “maybe we wondered if we had enough juice.”

They were right to wonder. This season, the juice definitely lives in the state of the brown-outs.