Fourclosed! / Three-year championship run comes to a stunning end as Duncan plays like the MVP and Spurs makes it a blowout

Then it was done.

After three years, three NBA championships and all that came with them, it was done, the Lakers worn too thin in the middle, grown too old on the edges, the rest of the league having come too fast.

The San Antonio Spurs, the last team to have won the title before the Laker reign, eliminated the Lakers in the sixth game of the Western Conference semifinals on Thursday night, 110-82, at Staples Center.

With just more than two minutes remaining, the people stood and cheered in a 25-point deficit, and Laker Girls cried, and Laker players touched one another’s hands. They thanked them for all of it, a three-peat that brought Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson together, from basketball worlds apart.

Derek Fisher’s eyes reddened on the bench. Robert Horry’s went with them. Their season was done in mid-May, the season having gone on without them, the Spurs off to play the winner of the Dallas Maverick-Sacramento King winner in the conference finals.

“We had a tough couple of years with these guys,” said Spur Coach Gregg Popovich, eliminated the last two postseasons by the Lakers. “To finally play well enough ... is beyond comprehension.”

Tim Duncan, the league most valuable player, scored 37 points and took 16 rebounds in the Lakers’ second-largest home playoff loss since Jackson arrived four years ago. From a two-point lead midway through the third quarter, the young and fresh Spurs, often suspect in the fourth quarter, went on a 33-12 run, and the fourth championship was gone.

Bryant, whose voice shook an hour after he left the floor, said, “It’s a foreign feeling. I don’t like the feeling. I don’t think anybody else likes the feeling.... I don’t ever want to feel it again.”

When he left an interview room and met Horry, they hugged. There are five free agents, six if the Lakers decline to exercise Horry’s option as it appears they will, and Laker management expects to rebuild in places around Bryant and O’Neal. So, some said goodbye for four months, others for longer, and Bryant, tough on his teammates in a regular season that brought only 50 wins, frowned now at what he knew would be change.

“I can’t even form the words,” he said. “We had so many battles together.”

Bryant scored 20 points against the Spurs, and O’Neal had 31 points and 10 rebounds on a sore knee, he said, that hurt, “a little bit.” There, again, was not enough around them, and so they lost the game and the series in the familiar places, in areas of energy (they were outrebounded by 12) and defense (Tony Parker scored 27 points) and conditioning (“Our legs were a little tired,” Bryant said.)

O’Neal sat out 12 games because of surgery, then three due to injury, and therefore the Lakers rushed and grinded through the final months, first to qualify for the playoffs, then to qualify well. Forward Rick Fox was injured in the first round and was lost until training camp at the least, and his replacement, Devean George, sprained his ankle a week later.

Jackson took a weekend off in the middle of the series against the Spurs, 60-game winners in the regular season, for an angioplasty procedure, ending months of fatigue and allowing him to return next year, his fifth in a five-year contract. His record run of 25 consecutive series victories ended with the Lakers outmanned, and he remained tied with Red Auerbach, both having coached nine NBA champions.

The Lakers had won 13 consecutive series, from Sacramento in 2000 to Minnesota in 2003, and then their time had come, just as the last two three-peats -- two Chicago Bulls’ teams in the last decade, both Jackson’s -- had.

“We are severely disappointed we couldn’t make a run for the championship and get our opportunity to win a fourth,” Jackson said. “It tells us something about how difficult it is and how much dedication and discipline you have to have to win four years in a row. We had a great run.

“We’ve gotten a little bit older, we suffered some injuries, we had a difficult year, as I told them in the locker room about 40 minutes ago. We talked sincerely about making correct steps from the beginning of the season to the end, which places us in a position to win. ... This year, we couldn’t do that, we couldn’t make the correct steps. We stumbled, we fell, we lacked some discipline as a basketball club, and we paid the price for it.”

O’Neal will bear some of the burden, even as he once promised the fourth championship would be “on me. It’s always on me.”

“This is something that’s going to hurt,” he said. “But, it’s reality. It’s life. You have to suck it up and move on. The good thing about American sports, there’s always a next year. Now, if David Stern would have come out in the beginning of the season and said this is the last year of the NBA, I’d be very, very upset.”

O’Neal turned 31 this season. He has three years remaining on his Laker contract, and the Lakers could choose to extend it by three more years in September. Bryant, 25, has left his three-year extension on the table for nearly a year, and seems content to play next season as a walk-year. He can opt out of his contract in a year.

General Manager Mitch Kupchak walked the halls of Staples Center after Thursday’s loss, raised an eyebrow and said, “That was ... convincing.”

There were no more numbers on the grease board, where Jackson counts down the victories necessary for a championship. It ended, in San Antonio, at 10, where it will stay. Many of them left on swollen ankles, or sore knees. Or, they just left, tired, sad. Jackson, who rarely acknowledges anyone, had waved to the crowd as he left the floor, and O’Neal had hugged several Spurs, as did Bryant. Fisher, who caught tears on the yellow folds of his uniform, lingered, and leaned on O’Neal on the way out.

“It finally caught up to us,” O’Neal said. “We can get some extra rest now, regroup, get some free agents, get some new guys and get some new blood, and hopefully we can start a new run next year.”

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Running of the Spurs

After the Lakers closed to 62-59, the Spurs scored on eight of their last nine possessions of the third quarter and 10 of their first 13 possessions of the fourth quarter, turning the game into a laugher. A look (time remaining refers to time on clock when points were scored or when Lakers took possession):

*--* THIRD QUARTER TIME PLAY SCORE 6:01 Tim Duncan makes eight-foot hook shot 64-59 5:05 Duncan misses jumper, grabs rebound and scores 66-62 4:05 Duncan misses jumper, Manu Ginobili grabs 68-64 rebound, Duncan fouled, makes both free throws 3:38 Duncan makes seven-foot jumper 70-64 3:00 Duncan makes one of two free throws 71-64 2:16 Duncan makes 13-foot jumper 73-64 1:40 Tony Parker makes 21-foot jumper 75-64 1:08 Duncan makes one of two free throws 76-64 :30 Duncan misses 10-foot hook shot 76-66 :01 Parker makes layup 78-69

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*--* FOURTH QUARTER TIME PLAY SCORE 11:41 Duncan makes eight-foot jumper 80-69 10:36 Duncan misses layup, grabs rebound and scores 82-69 10:07 Ginobili makes 15-foot jumper 84-70 9:33 Parker misses 24-foot three-pointer 84-70 9:02 Parker makes one of two free throws, Kevin 87-72 Willis rebounds missed free throw and scores 8:42 Parker makes one of two free throws 88-72 8:08 Ginobili makes 26-foot three-pointer 91-74 7:26 Duncan pass is stolen by O’Neal 91-76 6:39 Bruce Bowen makes 23-foot three-pointer 94-76 5:56 Willis misses 10-foot jumper, Ginobili grabs 96-76 rebound, Parker misses three-pointer, Willis slams rebound 5:24 Bowen misses 19-foot jumper 96-76 4:56 Parker makes eight-foot jumper 98-76 4:33 Ginobili makes one of two free throws 99-76

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Not This Time

Examining the Lakers’ seasons under Phil Jackson:

*--* 2002-03 SEASON RECORD 50-32 (.610) POSTSEASON RECORD 6-6 (.500) * Defeated Minnesota, 4-2, first round * Lost to San Antonio, 4-2, conference semifinals POSTSEASON OVERVIEW * Team scoring avg. 100.3 * Team defense avg. 100.0 * Leading scorer Kobe Bryant, 385 (32.1) * Leading rebounder Shaquille O’Neal, 178 (14.8) * Most assists Kobe Bryant, 62 (5.2) 2001-02 SEASON RECORD 58-24 (.707) POSTSEASON RECORD 15-4 (.789) * Defeated Portland, 3-0, first round * Defeated San Antonio, 4-1, conference semifinals * Defeated Sacramento, 4-3, conference finals * Defeated New Jersey, 4-0, NBA Finals POSTSEASON OVERVIEW * Team scoring avg. 97.8 * Team defense avg.; 94.1 * Leading scorer O’Neal, 541 (28.6) * Leading rebounder O’Neal, 239 (12.6) * Most assists Bryant, 87 (4.6) 2000-01 SEASON RECORD 56-26 (.683) POSTSEASON RECORD 15-1 (.938) * Defeated Portland, 3-0, first round * Defeated Sacramento, 4-0, conference semifinals * Defeated San Antonio, 4-0, conference finals * Defeated Philadelphia, 4-1, NBA Finals POSTSEASON OVERVIEW * Team scoring avg. 103.4 * Team defense avg. 90.6 * Leading scorer O’Neal, 487 (30.4) * Leading rebounder O’Neal, 247 (15.4) * Most assists Bryant, 97 (6.1) 1999-2000 SEASON RECORD 67-15 (.817) POSTSEASON RECORD 15-8 (.652) * Defeated Sacramento, 3-2, first round * Defeated Phoenix, 4-1, conference semifinals * Defeated Portland, 4-3, conference finals * Defeated Indiana, 4-2, NBA Finals POSTSEASON OVERVIEW * Team scoring avg. 99.8 * Team defense avg. 97.4 * Leading scorer O’Neal, 541 (30.7) * Leading rebounder O’Neal, 355 (15.4) * Most assists Bryant, 97 (4.2)

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