SAN ANTONIO, Tex. - We forgot. We forgot how good Tim Duncan could be, how good the San Antonio Spurs could be, were, are. Last night, they were good enough to be champions. Yes, the Detroit Pistons had made San Antonio look bad at times in these NBA Finals. But last night, in the crushing crucible of Game 7, the Spurs finally proved that they were tough enough to win the most demanding of their three championships in the past seven years with a gritty 81-74 win over the defending champion Pistons at the SBC Center.
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On the grand stage of a season-ending Game 7, the two teams were expected the produce stirring, memorable theatre. For much of the game, what they delivered was, once again, World War I basketball -- a possession-by-possession, trench-warfare-like battle of attrition.
| My head feels like an artillery barrage is still going on. Forget about any work being done in this town today. |
After six games and three quarters, it was all even. And in the fourth, it was San Antonio who answered the questions about their toughness, mental and otherwise. As a result, today a load of Detroit Pistons back-to-back championship merchandise is probably being incinerated somewhere. Feel free to check eBay to see if anybody managed to save some from the fire.
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There is a quote hung in the Spurs locker room by reporter and photographer Jacob Riis that sums up that franchise's philosophy.
"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter, hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred time without as much as a crack showing in it," it reads. "Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it -- but all that had gone before."
Fittingly, the quote is reproduced in the hallway outside in French, Serbo-Croatian and Spanish -- the languages spoken by the internationally-flavoured Spurs. Last night, it was especially appropriate -- no team is harder to crack than the Pistons. But after Detroit's season of adversity and obstacles, San Antonio delivered one final blow, and the Pistons split apart, just enough. The champs are dead, until autumn at least. Boring or not, long live the champs. Go Spurs Go!
Must. Have. More. Coffee. |
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