Duncan As TimVPossible: Spurs' Title Chances Still Rest In 21's Lanky Hands

"Here come the Spurs."

Stop me if you've heard this one before:

A team in South Texas that draws as much ire as it does respect and is called boring and consistent more than great and exciting shows up to another training camp with players older than dirt and little perceived chance of a championship.

With All-Stars from said team injured, those slim chances are slashed, and people start setting up the lawn chairs and video cameras for the victory parade in Los Angeles. Or Boston. Take your pick.

Then, that supposedly finished squad approaches the basketball gods like Oliver Twist mid-season and asks, "Please guys, may we have some more?"

The story of the greedy San Antonio Spurs should register with any basketball aficionado, and yet, so many allow themselves to be surprised when the same climax happens again and again. For fans who prefer glamour, large markets, celebrities or evenings packed with alley-oops and slam dunk contest auditions, San Antonio's lone pro sports franchise is like the ending to "The Crying Game" that few can stomach but everyone knows is coming.

How's that for consistency?

The Spurs sit at the top of a stacked Southwest Division and on the Western Conference's second-highest perch with an enviable 29-13 record. Enviable only because those who have read the story know this anti-big market, meat grinding defensive antagonist doesn't need 70 wins to climb to the top of the mountain in June.

A mere 57 victories did the trick in 2007.

Not much has changed for these consistent Spurs. Hell, it might as well be January 2005, 2006, 2007 or 2008. Pick a year.

The Spurs are in position to grab homecourt advantage in at least the first round of the playoffs, the team's perfectionist coach thinks its defense "sucks" and the savvy veterans who won't die find themselves chasing another glitzier and higher scoring squad projected to squash them again in the playoffs.

Perhaps the only difference in 2009 will be entering the AT&T Center come playoff time and not hearing Stan Kelly offer his signature line when the Spurs inbound the ball or his trademark delivery of "twoooooooo minutes, twoooo minutes."

Of all the things that have not changed, one towers above the rest in importance. He wears No. 21, has been known to drop in a few jumphooks and won't be waking up George Karl anytime soon with his precise post play.

The Denver Nuggets head coach offered this description of perennial All-Star Tim Duncan during a 2007 playoff game on ESPN: "He is so consistently great that it's almost boring. He almost puts me to sleep."

In a year where change is an action, a mandate and a promise, not a buzzword, Duncan's teammates should be thankful he stays the same.

Against the room temperature New Jersey Nets Friday Night in San Antonio, Duncan tallied another monster effort: 30 points, 15 rebounds, 4 blocks and 5 assists. While Michael Finley's corner three and Roger Mason Jr.'s free throws sealed the close win, it was typical Duncan stuff that put the Spurs in position to ward off a feisty team they could not put away.

The Spurs trailed the Nets midway through the fourth quarter, stuck in a low 70s slog. The offense had stagnated, guards were throwing the ball to the guys in dark blue jerseys instead of the guys in white ones and Popovich had to wonder if his team's late-game luck would finally bite the dust.

The Spurs entered the game with an 8-2 record in close contests, most of them against the league's lottery-bound cellar dwellars, and ended it by giving the ball to a familiar guy.

Then, Tim Duncan twice faced up on rookie Brook Lopez and twice swooshed his signature bank shot, both looks from tough angles, to give the Spurs a lead they would not relinquish.

He bothered shots at the rim, even if some of them still went in, and reprised his role as the setup closer.

If anyone had forgotten about Duncan's importance to the Spurs, he offered an emphatic reminder Friday night.

As the Spurs prepare to play 11 of their next 12 on the road, eight of those against playoff teams, Duncan's prodigiousness remains the reason San Antonio can be more than an afterthought on the Lakers' road to redemption and the Celtics' path to a repeat.

With 21 at the helm, they are big, smart and tough enough to deserve a chance against anyone in May or June. The Spurs next fly to Los Angeles, where the team most think will win it all might throttle them after a heartbreaking loss last week at the AT&T Center.

While Duncan has harvested help from his brilliant, explosive backcourt, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili have no delusions. The rest of the guys who count on Duncan's court vision and unselfish demeanor to get them high percentage, open looks had every reason to be astonished when Gary Payton flouted his All-Star valor on national television.

This is about a lot more than a trash-talking player turned trash-talking analyst stumping for a youngster in Minnesota who isn't half the defender or closer Duncan is.

No offense, Al Jefferson. Just as Turner Television employs Payton because he will be controversial, the Spurs lean on Duncan because they know he won't.

Nothing he has thrown up in the last week against Troy Murphy, Brook Lopez and Boris Diaw is a shock. He leans left, drives right, pump fakes this and swats away that.

"He said that?" Mason Jr. asked after the San Antonio Express-News beat reporter repeated Payton's ridiculous comments from the Thursday broadcast. "Has he watched Tim play this year?"

Those who have watched him so calmly reach his usual 20 and 10 plateau on most nights, and have even a small insight, know Duncan deserves consideration for an award more meaningful than a 10th consecutive start in a showboating bonanza.

That would be the one LeBron James is running away with, but Kobe Bryant and Chris Paul still believe they can snatch. Duncan nabbed league MVP honors twice in a row in the early 2000s and has three Finals MVP trophies he can show Paul and James if they want to know what one looks like.

The biggest reason why "the Big Fundamental" keeps the Spurs championship moxie intact every season, including this one? He would not tell Paul or James where he keeps his hardware if they asked and continues to express astonishment and sincere gratitude when fans honor him with a starting spot in the mid-season classic.

It seems even Duncan, with respect and humility running through his veins, forgets his team's story, too.

The Spurs will need a lot more than 20 points and 10 rebounds a night from Duncan to compete with the Lakers or the rising nemesis Hornets in the postseason. Popovich will pray that Ginobili can be "El Contusion" more than once a week and Parker can rediscover the unwavering confidence that allowed him to abuse any defender who dared take a turn on him in the 2007 playoffs.

Roger Mason and George Hill still need to grow up in the Spurs system. A pair of turnovers tells the part of the story that can and must change.

With the IUPUI rookie and newest clutch shooter paired with Ginobili in a three-guard set, the Spurs hoped to stomp on the Nets with an early fourth-quarter scoring run.

There was a run all right. The run the Nets made because Mason passed up an open jumper that led to a shot-clock violation, Hill coughed up several passes inside and Ginobili threw the ball off his legs. These are the mistakes that will irk Popovich when he reviews game tape.

No one knows better than him how precise the Spurs must be if they want to taste championship excess for a fifth time. He will also believe in his bunch because its floor leader can make all of this happen.

Without Duncan, Popovich might be the one in South Ossetia, the place he said he might have sent Hill had his Summer League clangfest carried over into the regular season. No one would write anything about the Spurs other than, "Yep, they exist."

In a league where that special, once-in-a-decade building block is the difference  between moribund and marvelous, San Antonio has a chance to author golden June because of what dumb luck brought the franchise in 1997.

In April 2007, when analysts and casual fans had already coronated the Dallas Mavericks and Phoenix Suns as Western Conference finalists, I suggested to a friend that Duncan deserved MVP consideration. He laughed hysterically and called me a homer. "He's not even a whisper in the discussion," my friend said. "Get real."

Duncan and his underdog Spurs then stormed through the playoffs, leaving behind as conference victims the Nuggets, Suns and Jazz before sweeping the Cleveland Cavaliers en route to a fourth title. Parker stole June and grabbed his own trophy for it, but even he conceded he was "just borrowing it from Timmy."

As it did that year, the Spurs shot at further playoff glory rests in the hands of a guy who could not care less what a ringless point guard-turned-analyst thinks of his All-Star credentials.

He will worry about greater things because he wants another serving of the sweetest fruit most pro players have never tasted.

LeBron James will win his first MVP in a landslide vote come May, and I will offer no objections. I would pick him, too, if the NBA sent me a ballot. James does not play with Parker or Ginobili.

But, if there were an award for greatness that refuses change? An award for the guy who continues to write the same story over and over, even if its readers insist they are tired of the plot?

Duncan's name would be higher than fifth on a list of candidates. His chances of winning it would be better than impossible.