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06/16/2003 Archived Entry: "Hail to the Champs."
Hail to the Champs.
So another NBA season is in the books, and the San Antonio Spurs are the new champions of the league. Led by Tim Duncan, the Spurs took a potential Game 7 scenario and ripped it away from the New Jersey Nets by mounting a 19-2 run in the 4th quarter, from which Jersey would never recover.
Tim Duncan ended the game in typical fashion, with a triple double. Along the way he shattered Patrick Ewing's NBA Finals record of 30 blocks in a Finals series and picked up the Series MVP award in the process. His exemplary play - along with a great showing by SA's bench players like Manu Ginobili and Long Island's own Speedy Claxton - brought an NBA championship to center David Robinson in his last game in the NBA. What a way to go out.
I know I'm an East Coast boy and my loyalties are supposed to go with the local boys, but I could not root for the New Jersey Nets. After watching them lose their second consecutive finals, I have to say they are still not ready to take the final step. They were too brash, their play far too chippy (Kenyon Martin, you should calm the hell down), they ended up looking to the officials to bail them out in every game, and once they fell sufficiently behind they fell into mope mode. Sorry, but champs don't play like that. Like the man says, act like you've been there before. Because you have. By the end of the series, you were acting like the damn Celtics out there.
San Antonio now has a title without an asterisk next to it, and they went through the best of their conference and division despite the predictions of yet another Lakers title. Jersey was an afterthought, even though they showed some fight early. Maybe next year. Big losses do wonders for levelling your head. The Nets should hope that they learn and start to act like a team that's been to the Finals twice.
