One year is the difference between knowing a team can win an NBA championship and hoping they can. That’s the difference between finishing one season with a 23-6 stretch and waiting on a team to put it all together the next year. That’s how long it takes for a team to stop earning the benefit of the doubt.

That’s also why the San Antonio Spurs aren’t part of the NBA Finals. There wasn’t a point in the 2007-08 season anyone can point to and say they knew the Spurs were destined to repeat. You wait long enough to hope things fall into place until the season’s over.

They had a shot at repeating, provided Manu Ginobili stayed healthy and effective. And if Tony Parker played like an NBA Finals MVP. And if Tim Duncan reasserted his MVP form. And if the role players could hit their perimeter jumpers and hold up in a Western Conference that was tougher and more athletic than anything they’d ever dealt with before. Maybe there’s enough HGH in Texas to get Robert Horry out of his coma.

That’s a lot of ifs. Eighty-two games is enough time for you to know for sure or it’s not going to happen. And when coach Gregg Popovich is saying the team has a long way to go physically and mentally compared to where they were a year ago, it makes for anxious times.

For all the good they’ve done, the Spurs most consistent fault has been their failure to bring in and develop young talent. Many point to drafting Parker, Ginobili and Duncan as smart decisions, but the fact is you have to go back to 2001 to find a player the Spurs drafted who is on the current roster.

Luis Scola was traded to Houston and never played a game for the Spurs. Beno Udrih was cut loose. John Salmons could’ve helped, if he hadn’t gone elsewhere a long time ago. Leandro Barbosa’s a pretty good role player…for the Phoenix Suns. Beyond that, there’s a legacy of guys who never made an NBA roster and players who are still overseas.

Compare that to the team they lost to. The Los Angeles Lakers drafted Luke Walton in 2003, Sasha Vujacic in 2004, Ronny Turiaf in 2005 and Jordan Farmar in 06. In a league that was making it easier for players to be offensive threats, teams like the Lakers, the Suns and the Utah Jazz caught onto the trend early and had adjusted. The Spurs were content to remain the best Eastern Conference-type team in the West.

It worked great, as long as teams didn’t have the intelligence, smarts and intensity  to keep up. The Dallas Mavericks did so in 2006 and the Lakers did so this week. Both times the Spurs have been left to wonder if they had the athleticism and the youth to compete in upcoming seasons.

Things won’t be any easier out West. The Lakers could add Andrew Bynum that a team that went 12-3 on the way to the NBA Finals. Utah is due to break out sometime. New Orleans has an MVP point guard paired with an All-Star power forward and enough role players to keep defenses honest. Maybe Houston will stay healthy and maybe Rick Carlisle can give the Mavericks the edge they need to break back into the elite. Then Phoenix has enough left to make a final run at the title, assuming they can find the right coach in a pretty small pool.

Sounds dire, but a trio of Ginobili, Parker and Duncan is enough to contend for a championship as long as they all stay healthy. The Spurs were good enough to lead the Lakers by 20 in Game 1 and by 17 in Game 5, with both games coming in Los Angeles.

They were also inconsistent enough to prevent the Lakers from coming back in both games and failed to adjust to anything L.A. did on defense. Put that on top of a hobbled Ginobili and the one-man zone defense that is Lamar Odom and it’s a problem.

The window isn’t closed yet for the Spurs, but some changes will be in order if they’re going to add championship No. 5.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.