Tom Knott: Age of the Spurs appears at its end

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By Tom Knott

The model franchise of the NBA limped out of the playoffs this week.

That was a glum-looking Manu Ginobili in street clothes, wondering what might have been if he had not been sidelined with a stress fracture in his right ankle.

That was the gimpy Tim Duncan trying to hoist the Spurs on his shoulders, hitting an assortment of shots, while ignoring the tendonosis in his right quadriceps tendon, a degenerative condition exacerbated by his 33 years.

This was the Spurs of Duncan and Tony Parker and a whole lot of nothing, unable to match the balance and the shot-making volume of the Mavericks.

The Spurs as we have come to know them are done. Their foundation is too old, too prone to injury and too slow to make another title run. Their lack of athleticism undermined their cause against the Mavericks.

The Spurs achieved one of their defensive objectives in slowing down Dirk Nowitzki until Game 5. But they allowed too many of the afterthoughts of the Mavericks to slice through the jaws of their previously vaunted defense.

The Spurs are not about to fall into the abyss of mediocrity, not as long as Duncan, Parker and Ginobili are in the lineup. Championship-caliber teams do not fall off a cliff as much as they fade on an incremental level.

We saw that with the Pistons. They won an NBA championship, made two trips to the NBA Finals and appeared in six consecutive Eastern Conference finals before taking the Chauncey Billups-Allen Iverson gamble in November.

That move, while understandable, hastened the demise of the Pistons. Yet they were not going to win a championship with Billups, not in their present state. They probably would have been no more than a conference-semifinals team with Billups in these playoffs. With Iverson, a one-time big shot-maker, the Pistons had what amounted to a puncher's chance in the playoffs.

Or so went the thinking of Joe Dumars at the time of the trade.