With Vengeance Theirs, Spurs Finding Motivation, Not Age, Their Greatest Foe

SAN ANTONIO — As the excellence of the New England Patriots endures into yet another Super Bowl in yet another year, it's easy to fall into the trap of assuming the people who know how to win will just keep winning and winning.

How many people did you hear entering this NBA season insist that they would never again assume the San Antonio Spurs are too old to win?

The Spurs pretty plainly proved last season that their veterans can still play and their coach is just better than everyone else at his job.

Before Gregg Popovich won that last NBA Finals and before Bill Belichick earned his ticket to this Super Bowl, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver was breaking down how both coaches have consistently beaten the spread in the betting world by adapting their teams to make them better than expected.

But the thing is, if you objectively evaluate where the Spurs are this season, there is no question that they're in an underdog position.

A first-round playoff exit, even as defending NBA champions, would not be a surprise. Failing altogether to qualify for the playoffs in the stacked Western Conference is not out of the question, either.

Now-healthy Oklahoma City is certainly coming to take someone's spot in the West's top eight. Right now, Phoenix is eighth, and San Antonio is seventh.

"At some point the run will end, but I don't know when that is," Popovich said. "Everybody said that it was years ago. I don't know what's going on here, but it can't last forever. That's for sure."

Popovich isn't about to surrender, of course, but even his masterful management of players has been no match for the human tendency to let down the year after a title.

San Antonio's sequence of titles came in 2003, '05 and '07—making it questionable whether the Spurs could even enter the discussion as a dynasty if they never repeated (San Antonio's other championships with Tim Duncan came in 1999 and, obviously, 2014).

Eric Gay/Associated Press

What the Spurs did accomplish was repeating as Western Conference champions last season. But it was hardly a letdown situation: They were maniacally driven by that Game 6 collapse in the 2013 NBA Finals, epically motivated after blowing that five-point lead in the final 28.2 seconds.

As the sad summer shifted into training camp, Popovich said, "I've thought about it every day." Duncan, upon finishing off the long prelude with the Western Conference Finals and finally drawing the Miami Heat once more, added, "We've got that bad taste in our mouth still."

This season hasn't been like that. It can't be like that.   

The Spurs have finally heated up a bit, winning eight of their past 10 games as Kawhi Leonard starts to assert himself after returning from a torn ligament in his right hand. They followed up an embarrassing effort in Chicago on Thursday night—a 104-81 loss to a Bulls team missing Joakim Noah—with home victories against light challengers in the Lakers and Bucks.

But to listen to Popovich that night in Chicago—when the Spurs had just 17 assists one night after Brandon Jennings alone had 21—was to hear a coach publicly crying to get his players' attention.

Jason Miller/Getty Images

"Our play was humiliating and embarrassing," Popovich said, "because of the Bulls' tenacity and sense of purpose."

Popovich cited a "laissez-faire, entitled attitude." He described his starters' lack of urgency as feeling "everything will be fine," an approach that would've never been found on the determined Spurs of last season.

Here was Duncan's analysis, practically oozing the complacency that embeds itself so often in defending champions: "Nights like that happen sometimes." Then the quick allowance that it shouldn't be OK: "Too often this year."

You could argue that Duncan doesn't have the same insatiable approach as his closest contemporary champion, Kobe Bryant, who repeated three times. But there's no doubt about Duncan's will.

If Popovich is Belichick, then Duncan is Tom Brady, another guy too many people have written off too soon, including this season. At 37, Brady was the subject of this kind of headline from The Wall Street Journal four weeks into this NFL season: "Has Tom Brady Lost His Golden Arm?"

At 38, Duncan hasn't lost anything from last season, when he was all fired up for redemption. His numbers from then to now reflect an absolutely robotic consistency: 15.1 points per game to 14.8, 9.7 rebounds to 10.0, 3.0 assists to 3.1, 1.9 blocks to 2.0, 49.0 field-goal shooting to 48.8, 73.1 free-throw shooting to 72.9.

"He's in that same category with the Kobes and Michaels and all those guys," Popovich said. "Top-notch competitors who do what they have to do to stay at that level. That's really the tough part. There are a whole lot of guys who have a good year or a good night or a good month, but to have the careers those kinds of people had, that's a special mindset, a mental toughness beyond their physical capabilities."

Even though it's true that Duncan, as we're seeing with Bryant, won't be able to keep going forever, it's not so much Duncan's production that will hold the Spurs back this season.

As Popovich said about Duncan: "He basically does it on one leg." They depend on everyone else to play with the zip and pace that characterize the best of this era of Spurs basketball.

Eric Gay/Associated Press

The Spurs are playing at the ninth-slowest pace in the NBA this season at 95.50 possessions per game, according to NBA.com advanced stats, down from 97.07 last season. What Popovich liked best about beating the Lakers the night after the abomination in Chicago was the Spurs' pace.

It can be as simple as lack of drive to go and go and keep going for a team that pushed through one long and ultimately frustrating Finals run and then another long and ultimately fulfilling Finals run—beside the age and mileage on Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.

"We have to be concerned about the things that we do well that we just are not doing," Ginobili said. "We need to be reliable and consistent."

Offering context for the bounce-back victory over the Lakers after losing badly in Chicago, Ginobili said, "It's easier to focus and get ready when you were embarrassed."

Therein lies the whole story of the Spurs last season, but not this season, which appears headed for a very different conclusion.

Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.