That MVP Doesn’t Stand for Much in Home Stretch

Regrets, they have a few.

Competitiveness is never a question with the San Antonio Spurs, who started the Western Conference semifinals on the road, without David Robinson, and still scared the daylights out of the Lakers.

But then there’s the question of the Spurs’ ... uh ... poise.

Sunday, for the fourth game in this series, the Small-Market Team That Could, At Least Until the Fourth Quarter, gasped to a halt at the end, this time blowing a 10-point lead in the last 4:55 and losing, 87-85, to the Lakers.

The Spurs, who had scored 19, 15 and 18 points in the fourth quarters of the first three games, had 10 in this one. If they had won the games they’ve led going into the final period, they would lead the series, 3-1, which is a lot different from their current predicament, trailing, 3-1.

In case they don’t feel bad enough, they went down with their guns in their holsters.

Or: Anyone heard that “MVP!” chant around here lately?

Through three quarters, Tim Duncan, their newly crowned and deserving MVP, had 27 points, having made nine of 13 shots. In the fourth, he took only two shots, missed both, and scored three points.

Worse, he took only one in the last 4:55 as the Spurs’ 10-point lead faded away ... his desperation 21-foot, turnaround, no-chance heave at the end of the game.

“What he did was the best he could do,” Spur Coach Gregg Popovich said. “Whatever he did, that’s what you go with.

“I mean, if you kick it out of the post and it goes in, it’s a great play and if it doesn’t, everybody thinks somebody made a mistake. He’s a decision maker for us. He’s our quarterback.”

Popovich, of course, was being nice to his franchise player. This turned out to be nicer than the franchise player felt like being to himself. Asked if he wished he had taken the ball at the Lakers at the end, Duncan, speaking softly and without hesitation, answered, “Absolutely, yeah.

“I turned down a couple looks a little earlier than I should have. I was trying to be patient, I was trying to find the open people. I should have just been a little more selfish and taken it myself.”

The Lakers, who don’t have anyone who can guard him, did their best to mess up his mind, with a brilliant-accidental strategy of playing him one-on-one for three periods, during which Duncan embarrassed Robert Horry and Samaki Walker, laying up the ball over them time after time ...

Laker Coach Phil Jackson doesn’t like to double-team, but at the end had no choice but to bring help and lots of it.

So Duncan, who’d had an easy time for three quarters, had to start thinking in the fourth. Because his teammates seemed to start swallowing with more difficulty the later it got, every time he passed the ball out of the post, it led to a bricked shot or a turnover, meaning every decision he made turned out wrong.

“In the fourth quarter, you pay him the respect he deserves,” the Lakers’ Rick Fox said. “It’s hard with three guys hanging on you. If he wants to shoot that, we welcome that.”

Of course, if you’re Popovich, Duncan is the least of your problems. The Spurs’ coach has two days before Game 5 to restore the confidence of his other players, who ran out of it Sunday, and they don’t sell it at convenience stores.

“I have two feelings,” Popovich said. “I’m really proud of our team for the way they competed. The other feeling is, we’ve got to maintain composure and shoot shots that are good shots. And if we shoot ‘em, believe they’re going in in the fourth quarter.

“We had five or six shots that were either ill-advised or not shot with confidence and you can’t do that.... Down the stretch, people who take shots have to make sure they’re good shots and they’ve got to believe they’re going in....

“You have to give the Lakers credit, because they’re a great defensive team.... but you still ought to be able to score more than we are. We’ve got to step up and do that. We’re making enough stops to win these games, especially against a hell of a team, but in the fourth quarter, there can’t be turnovers against this team and you’ve gotta make some shots. The margin of error is just too small.”

Not anymore. There is no margin of error for the Spurs, a loss from elimination, with Kobe Bryant cooking and peace having ostensibly broken out between Shaquille O’Neal and Jackson.

Some seasons it ends like that and for the Spurs, a lot of the recent ones, having to surmount the Lakers, who have two superstars to their one. If one of the big Lakers is limping, in a snit, or both, they have another.

If the Lone Spur guesses wrong, well, it’s only five months to the start of training camp.

So Duncan gets an “A” as a stand-up guy and an “incomplete” as a go-to guy. It’s no way for an MVP to start the summer.