Anti-Drama Team

The defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs maintain a low profile, which is just the way they like it.

Let the gossip swirl around Kobe and Shaq and Gary and Karl and Phil and the daily Laker melodrama. Let the men and women with the notepads and the microphones fawn over LeBron and Carmelo. Let the cameras focus on Yao Ming and Mark Cuban and Chris Webber’s comeback. Salute Jerry West and Hubie Brown and the upstart Memphis Grizzlies. Toast the Indiana Pacers, the best team in the East. Give Kevin Garnett his due.

Leave us alone, the Spurs all but ask. We don’t mind.

“I don’t mean this in a wise-[guy] way or anything -- I mean it in a totally truthful way -- we could give a ... less,” Coach Gregg Popovich said this week of the lack of attention focused on the Spurs. “Never have, never will. It’s totally meaningless, where the media pigeonholes you or whether they talk about you or not. It’s absolutely meaningless, and our guys learned that a decade ago.

“We just go play the games and try to get better.”

Popovich even admonishes those who label the Spurs defending champions, arguing that the team that will open the playoffs Saturday against the Grizzlies is different from the one that cast aside the New Jersey Nets in a six-game NBA Finals last June, David Robinson’s having retired, etc.

“It’s a different group with different challenges,” he says.

He concedes, however, that this group has progressed at about the same rate as last season’s team, which ended the Lakers’ three-year championship reign in a six-game Western Conference semifinal series and won a title years ahead of even the most ambitious timetable, Popovich’s included.

“That, I think, is in tribute to Timmy being so flexible,” he says of forward Tim Duncan, two-time league most valuable player and Spur life force. “He’s the only star we have. We don’t have three All-Stars or two All-Stars or four All-Stars.

“He’s able to put people around him and help them feel comfortable enough to accept their roles and just do whatever needs to be done.

“He’s pretty special in that way.”

The Spurs tried to add an All-Star last summer, but Jason Kidd spurned their offer and re-upped with the Nets. Robinson and Steve Kerr retired, and Steve Smith, Speedy Claxton and Stephen Jackson are playing elsewhere.

To replace Robinson, they signed 7-foot free agent Rasho Nesterovic, formerly of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Hedo Turkoglu was acquired in a three-team trade with the Pacers and Sacramento Kings. Former Laker Robert Horry signed on.

They joined a nucleus of 21-year-old point guard Tony Parker, swingman Manu Ginobili, defensive stopper Bruce Bowen and the only holdovers from the 1999 championship team, Duncan and backup center Malik Rose.

Integrating them was slow going at first, a 9-10 start drawing the admonishment from Popovich that these weren’t really the defending champions.

Not that anybody expected them to continue struggling.

“I saw them play 35 games last season,” says Mike Dunleavy, an analyst on Spur telecasts then before taking over as coach of the Clippers last summer, “and this team’s better than last year’s team.”

His argument: Nesterovic, 27, gives them similar numbers and a more consistent effort than a 37-year-old Robinson did last season; Turkoglu, at 6-10, gives them an outsized small forward, creating difficult matchups for opponents, and Parker is ever improving, “as tough to contain as any guard in this league.”

The Spurs’ slow start gave way to a 48-15 finish. They’re 22-7 since the All-Star break, 11-0 since March 23, when they lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves, who by one game ended their run of three consecutive Midwest Division titles.

As the playoffs approach, Popovich has them peaking.

“For us, it’s always after the All-Star break,” he says of their recent surge. “By then, I think the new guys understand the system. We wanted to keep the team together because that’s always an easier formula, but it didn’t work out with Speedy and Stephen, and we had three or four guys retire, so we had to do it over again. And when you do that, it’s always going to take time.

“So, I think the second half of the season has always been better for us, and the method we use is something where we kind of put everybody in the dark in the beginning. We kind of throw everything out there at once, try to confuse them all. And then as the season goes, they start to understand things better and better and it all comes together for them later in the season.”

Out of the spotlight, the Spurs are left to their own devices.

They’re a team, Dunleavy says, that’s comfortable in its own skin.

“I think for the most part they’re OK with who they are as a group,” he says. “They’re not worried about it. They don’t have a media that’s beating them over the head in San Antonio about their performance.

“They look at their team and say, ‘We’ve got Tim Duncan. We won the championship last year. It will come. We’ve got a veteran team with a good work ethic and good discipline.’ They’ve got a good defense, which is what you always need to anchor you. A good defense and a good go-to guy go a long way.”

For the Spurs, perhaps, all the way to the top -- again.

That would bring some notice, but they probably wouldn’t mind.

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Changing Spurs

The defending champion San Antonio Spurs have changed half their playoff roster from last season, including two starters:

*--* 2002-03 2003-04 Starters P Starters Bruce Bowen F Bruce Bowen Tim Duncan F Tim Duncan David Robinson C Rasho Nesterovic Stephen Jackson G Hedo Turkoglu Tony Parker G Tony Parker Reserves P Reserves Malik Rose C Malik Rose Manu Ginobili G Manu Ginobili Steve Smith G Devin Brown Speedy Claxton G Jason Hart Steve Kerr G Charlie Ward Kevin Willis F-C Kevin Willis Danny Ferry F Robert Horry

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