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“I don’t
understand—why don’t people like us?” Bruce Bowen asked.
You
really want to know?
“Go
ahead.”
Because
you and the mean, ol’ San Antonio Spurs ruin happy
endings for players and teams whom fans want to see keep
playing. Oh, and also because you’re too reliable and
humble, in a league where mouthy and enigmatic happens.
“Is that
it?” the Spurs’ veteran forward said. “We’re not who
people want to see? That’s funny, because when Ron
Artest was having issues and the league was having image
problems, all you heard was, ‘Why can’t teams be more
like the Spurs?’
“The
public thinks they want other things—all the
chest-pounding and screaming. But at the end of the day,
quietly, parents want their kids to grow up in a way
that they work hard, keep their mouth shut and act like
you’ve been there before.”
Bowen
spoke from his cell phone in New Orleans on Monday
night, three hours before his team methodically knocked
out the Hornets in Game Seven of the Western Conference
semifinals—three hours before a player less than a month
away from 37 years old, maybe the premier perimeter
defender in NBA history, frustrated Chris Paul and some
bold kid named Jannero Pargo, who thought he was going
to save the day for New Orleans before Bowen got in his
grille late and the rickety Spurs sent a bunch of
postseason adolescents home for the season.
Palms
out, feet shuffling laterally, limbs fluttering like bat
wings, Bowen was a microcosm of the franchise the past
decade—that annoying insect impossible to shoo away.
“We’re
goin’ back to Podunk,
Texas,
again,” Charles Barkley bemoaned, shaking his head in
mock disgust on TNT after San Antonio held off New
Orleans. Summing up most NBA fans’ feelings outside
south
Texas,
Barkley added: “Damn. They’re like cockroaches. They
won’t die.”
Least-liked champions
Watching
the Spurs reject another marketable NBA plot—this one
featured young Chris Paul and the city he helped raise
from Hurricane Katrina’s ruin (a big seller at the
All-Star Game in February)—it’s becoming clear that
Bowen, Tim Duncan and their teammates are this
millennium’s Larry Holmes.
The
Spurs are among the least-loved champions in the history
of sport, right alongside Holmes, the former heavyweight
great who had the misfortune of following boxing’s king
of kings, Muhammad Ali.
They’ve
got what Grant Hill once actually called “Larry Holmes
syndrome.” He used the term to describe the impossible
responsibility he, Jerry Stackhouse and other young
skywalkers had following in Michael Jordan’s footsteps.
But it’s just as apt for the Spurs, who in 1999 became
the first team to win a championship after Jordan and
the Incredi-Bulls—San Antonio’s first of four titles the
past decade.
Like
Holmes, they have learned that coming after the greatest
is more burden than blessing.
In
succeeding
Jordan,
the Spurs have not just taken out their share of white
hopes (dumping Dirk Nowitzki and Dallas, bloodying and
hip-checking Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns out of the
playoffs in consecutive years); they’re the small-market
spoilers, annually crushing a young superstar’s dreams.
Before
Paul, the Spurs outlasted Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe
Bryant’s dysfunctional dynasty; they swept aside the
league’s new golden child, LeBron James, in four games
last June; and they have played in some of the most
ratings-challenged NBA Finals in memory, including a
yawner against the Nets in 2003.
If they
can send a reinvigorated Bryant and the Lakers packing
in the Western Conference finals, they will have
successfully removed Shaq and Kobe from the playoffs
again while simultaneously ruining the best Finals story
line David Stern could imagine:
Lakers-Celtics Redux—Kobe and the Lake Show vs. Kevin
Garnett and Boston, 21 years after Magic’s junior sky
hook buried Bird.
What is
it about the Spurs, always beating the players and teams
America wants to see win?
“Part of
it is the selling of the sensational,” Bowen said.
“Like, ‘Oh my gosh! Look at that guy pound his chest
after he made that basket.’ We’re not Vegas. We don’t
have this me-against-the-world attitude. But that’s what
sells now. So they need to come up with labels for us.”
Like,
boring and dirty?
“Exactly,” Bowen added. “Look at Robert Horry. In San
Antonio he’s a dirty player. But he wasn’t dirty when he
played in
L.A.
Why is that?”
‘What is
dirty?’
Indeed,
Horry was a clutch player for the Lakers who took and
made all the pressure shots. But in
San Antonio,
the player known as Big Shot Rob has suddenly become
“Cheap Shot Bob,” as Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski
dubbed Horry after the veteran had the temerity to set a
back pick on David West, a Hornets player with a bad
back, who went down in Game Six almost as hard as
New Orleans in Game Seven.
“Look at
my reputation. It’s easy to say, ‘He’s dirty,’” Bowen
said. “But what defines dirty? Because I play defense
against a guy whose job is to score on me at will? You
don’t see me going out hitting anyone, but it’s amazing
when you deal with certain darlings in the league and
the perception that they’re supposed to score.”
Another
reason the country turns on
San Antonio
is because of Duncan’s unemotional on-court demeanor. He
makes Alan Greenspan look like a hard partyer. Spock on
antidepressants is more exciting.
But the
real reason is that the Spurs continue to resemble the
old geezers who show up at the YMCA each weekend, yell
“Next!” and somehow figure out a way to hold the court
against a bunch of uppity kids. After three straight
blowouts in New Orleans, their season on the brink, the
Spurs again made do in Game Seven.
They
basically made younger, superior athletes with fresher
legs play their way, slowing the game down, making every
possession count. It was like taking a hyperactive kid
off his medication, until he became so antsy and
frustrated he didn’t know what to do except sulk and go
away. They specialize in making supernovas burn out
before their time. And like Barkley said, they won’t
die.
Poor
Kobe. He’s got next. |
