With all the hoopla surrounding the formation of super teams in Miami and New York, it was easy to overlook the marquee matchup this past Sunday. Lest we forget the San Antonio Spurs still possess the best record in the league and the Los Angeles Lakers are still the back-to-back NBA champions.
Over the past decade there have been few teams in all of professional sports that can match the staying power of the Lakers and the Spurs. The Lakers have won five championships and the Spurs have won three. To put that into perspective, in that time span no other team in the league has won more than one championship.
Head to head, the Lakers have beat the Spurs in three playoff series since the 2000-1 season while the Spurs have beat the Lakers once. That one series was to end the Lakers’ quest for a fourth consecutive title in 2003. The Spurs and the Lakers were so damn good back in the day, whoever came out of that series was bound to win the championship as the East was significantly weaker than it is now.
The rivalry between the Lakers and the Spurs is a discreet one, it certainly doesn’t receive the same hype as the upcoming matchup with the Heat on Thursday and the Kings were perceived as Laker Nation’s number one enemy back in the Sha-Kobe days albeit never beating the Lakers in the playoffs. Rivalry games are usually featured on Christmas day, but I found myself wondering when’s the last time the Lakers and Spurs hooked up on Christmas day?
The answer is none, because regardless of how successful the Spurs are, they have this label of boring they can never shed. If they were television shows, the Lakers would be the Simpsons and the Spurs would be the news. People watch both shows but one show is clearly more popular amongst the general public.
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Make no mistake about it though, in Coach Jackson’s mind the Spurs are the Lakers #1 rival. As Doug Collins said in a broadcast “the Lakers only respect one team in the league and that’s San Antonio.”
Case in point: despite the Lakers significant over the lead over the Spurs Sunday afternoon, Coach Jackson left Pau in the game for much of the fourth quarter and re-inserted the Black Mamba with five minutes left. It was a statement game, and the Lakers left their mark Sunday.
Their respective supporting casts have changed over the years but as long as the Lakers have their star (the Black Mamba) and the Spurs have theirs (Parker, Duncan and Ginobili) they’ll be eternally contenders.
Their end result may be the same but that’s where the similarities end. The Spurs’ management have traditionally built through the draft (George Hill and Tony Parker) and the acquisition of savvy veterans as the final pieces to their championship puzzle(Richard Jefferson, Michael Finley).
And the Lakers have dipped into the free-agent market (Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Shaquille O’Neal) and made trades (Pau Gasol) whenever they need reinforcements.
The Spurs recently became the first team to reach 50 wins with a win over the lowly Cavaliers. With a quarter of the season left to play, the Spurs sit six and a half games clear of the Lakers for first-place in the West.
Since the all-star break the Lakers have been 7-0, you can attribute the Lakers’ winning ways to Kobe’s leadership, the presence of Bynum or the return of Barnes. But really, the two-time defending champs were just buying their time, saving their legs, and waiting for someone to wake them up. Consider Sunday’s win a wakeup call after dozing off in Cleveland just before the break.
“Something like this, a game like this over a team like San Antonio, gives you confidence and restores a comfort level,” Gasol said. “You never think that you’re going to be up by 32 points against that type of team. So it does take you back. Maybe it restores your own belief in how good you can be.”
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If the Lakers maintain this level of play, they’ll probably overtake Dallas as the number two seed, and inevitably the titans will clash again. It’s almost inevitable that the Lakers and Spurs will meet this year in the playoffs, seeing as they’ve been battling each other since the inception of the millennium.
The Lakers showed Sunday they are hungry for another three-peat and the Spurs’ record from October to April just means the Lakers will have to go into San Antonio and rip their hearts out just as they did Sunday.
The Laker and the Spurs rivalry has delivered so many memories, from the 0.4 Fisher shot to Brent Barry’s infamous no-call on the game-tying three to Antonio McDyess’ tip-in earlier this season, count on more to come in the playoffs.
Both teams may be aging but as Kobe said “There’s always concern, look at San Antonio, they have the same level of concern we do. Just like things are rolling, things can fall apart. Everybody is concerned at this point…you can’t beat me in June.”
To get to June you have to beat San Antonio first, Mamba.