Scratching the Surface by GrandeDave

The 2004-05 NBA season culminated in the San Antonio Spurs earning that franchise’s third championship trophy, its first in the post-David Robinson era. To accomplish that feat, the Spurs team battled through a grueling 105 games. But to truly value the prize at the top of this basketball summit, one must consider that Coach Gregg Popovich was forced to carefully manage the minutes of key players Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili. Both represented their countries in Olympic play during the summer of 2004 and, pre-dating that, both of those players as well as Tony Parker had spent additional time on the court during Olympic qualifying play.

Beloved longtime Spur and eternal champion in Spurs fans’ hearts, Malik Rose, was traded mid-season to New York for Nazr Mohammed. The third championship run proved to be as much an emotional roller coaster as it was daunting for players and fans alike.

In addition to the fatigue factor, the actual game-by-game road to the championship was far from easy. San Antonio narrowly escaped a devastating ankle injury to Tim Duncan on March 20th. This occurred, ironically, against Finals opponent Detroit, just as the Spurs were rounding into playoff form. Meanwhile, Manu Ginobili missed several games with a hamstring injury and key reserve Devin Brown suffered the lingering effects of a herniated disk.

Fatigue and injury combined to dampen the franchise’s championship fire by the time the Denver Nuggets popped up on the first round radar. There was an obvious cloud of doubt as to whether Duncan’s injured ankle would hold up against Denver’s youthful running game and hard-fouling defense. With the Nuggets owning the league’s best record since the all-star break, the Spurs began to look more like the underdog.

The first game of the playoffs against Denver heightened those worries as point guard Andre Miller put up a career performance and dominated Tony Parker in the first half of the game. Not just Duncan, but the entire team came out flat at home. After a scolding from Popovich and the natural result of adrenaline by fear, the Spurs destroyed Denver in Game 2 and would go on to sweep the next four games.

Key in this series was how San Antonio handled Denver’s altitude and determination to win games in Denver before a raucous Pepsi Center crowd. Denver employed hard foul tactics on Ginobili and shot, arguably, below the belt as Coach George Karl ranted in the Game 3 postgame press conference about Ginobili’s unorthodox style of play. Evidently, Karl’s complaints further fueled the Spurs’ collective desire to get out of this tough series sooner rather than later.

The Western Conference Semifinals brought the Seattle Supersonics to town and a reversal of trash talk. Whereas it was Denver’s players who rather humbly spoke of the Spurs players as their coach chose to sulk, against Seattle it was Ray Allen leading the moaning while Coach Nate McMillan portrayed class and workmanship. San Antonio rolled through the first two games of that series at home and, after Vladimir Radmanovic’s playoff campaign was ended prematurely in the first game due to an ankle injury, it seemed as if Spurs Nation would be breaking out the brooms.

Not so fast.

Although Seattle was clearly playing short-handed due to injury, smart game tactics by McMillan, hard fouls, and the unrelenting determination of guards Allen and Antonio Daniels were good for two straight victories. Perhaps the stinging reality of a 2-2 series coupled with Duncan’s improved mobility on his tender ankles encouraged the Spurs’ will to close out Seattle in six tough games. The negative by-product of this series was that Duncan rolled his other ankle, albeit not serverely.

The Western Conference Finals promised a clash of styles as the gunning and defensively-challenged Phoenix Suns squared off against the more experienced and defensively-oriented San Antonio Spurs. It also presented Spurs players and fans with a much-appreciated reprieve from oppositional trash talking and whining about Bruce Bowen and Ginobili in the media. For Spurs fans, the belief was that the Spurs could “steal” one of the first two games in Phoenix.

As it turned out, the Spurs dished out two niceties. San Antonio got more than they bargained for in taking the first two games on the road. The Spurs scored 121 and 111 points in those first games, thus proving again that they could run and defend with the best. It was during this series in which Popovich coined his team “chameleons.”

In knocking out the team with the best regular season record in impressive fashion by beating Phoenix all three times on the road, the Spurs roared into the Finals hot and with time to spare. An eight day pre-Finals layoff was just what the doctor ordered for Duncan’s ankles and Ginobili and Parkers’ batteries. The only fear would be rust.

Meanwhile, in the Eastern Conference Finals Detroit was slugging it out over seven games against Shaquille O’Neal and the Miami Heat, clinching the series in Miami. From the San Antonio fans’ perspective, this Finals series against the defending champion Pistons would be no cakewalk, though a walk in the park it seemed to be after San Antonio destroyed the Pistons at home in the first two games. Duncan scored effortlessly and Ginobili continued to dissect yet another imposing interior defense.

The music was still playing as the Spurs boarded the plane to Detroit.

Up 2-0 and armed with history to all but ensure the franchise’s third championship, the Spurs did everything they could to become historical goats. Tied late in the third period of Game 3, and within reach of putting a stranglehold on the series, the Spurs let Detroit run awry in the fourth and take the game by a seventeen point margin. Most Spurs fans held strong to their knowledge that the Spurs rarely play back-to-back poor games.

Unfortunately for Spurs fans, the Pistons must not have been made aware of that fact and went on to humiliate the Spurs in front of a world audience by a margin of 102-71. Now you could cut the tension in the city of San Antonio with a knife. Many analysts were all but ready to surrender, claiming that Detroit was simply a tougher, better team.

Then came a Father’s Day to remember, courtesy of five-time NBA champion Robert Horry.

His team having already blown a chance to win the game during regulation, Horry drained an open three off a Rasheed Wallace defensive lapse to put the Spurs over the top 3-2 heading back to San Antonio. Another notch on the headboard for Horry, another Championship for the Spurs.

Time to start planning the parade…right?

Wrong. Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton and Antonio McDyess would do their parts in extending the championship series to its first seventh game since the 1994-95 Finals. The tension was back in San Antonio and Spurs Nation had never been more jittery in franchise history.

It all came down to a decisive Game 7, a situation in which the Spurs and their fans had never been. And when the home team fell behind by nine points midway through the third period, the SBC Center was pulsating to the beat of a determined home crowd. Unlike Game 6, the fans knew the stakes of this game and refused to let up. Sparked by his teammates’ and the home crowd’s tireless confidence in him, Duncan rediscovered his bank shot and footwork in the paint. Within minutes, a nine point lead for Detroit became a tie ballgame heading into the final period of this marathon and classic NBA Finals.

Duncan, the unknowing target of days of criticism of his toughness, would bring home the third championship in San Antonio Spurs franchise history. All of the doubters silenced, both he and Ginobili reveled in their legendary triumph.

Duncan solidified his place as the greatest power forward ever to play the game, at just 29 years of age, and Ginobili joined Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen as the only players in NBA history to win an NBA championship following an Olympic gold medal changed. Horry had hit yet more long range bombs to further cement his legacy as one of the most clutch shooters in playoff history, and Popovich instantly became the greatest coach in the modern era changed. Most importantly, the fans would have their parade in the Alamo City and fans across the globe of this internationally-comprised team would enjoy their victory cigar.

But the greatest news of all?

The Spurs are just scratching the surface.