San Antonio Spurs: Flying Under the Radar of a Thunder-Heat Focused NBA

The San Antonio Spurs are second in the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association.

If you haven't noticed, it's quite okay, because it seems nobody else has either.

Maybe it's because the Spurs were, like always, deemed too old to have an impact this year. Maybe it's because the Western Conference is so full with talented teams that the Spurs didn't stand out all that much.

Or maybe it was because the talk around the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Miami Heat let San Antonio fly straight under the radar.

Maybe we were so busy about what's wrong with the Heat's current skid and whether Durant can win the Thunder a championship and whether the Bulls can win without Rose that the Spurs were simply just forgotten about and dismissed.

Well it's time to start talking about the San Antonio Spurs.

They're currently on the longest winning streak in the league with nine straight victories, only losing three times since the beginning of March.

In that time, they recorded wins at home over the Orlando Magic, Dallas Mavericks, Philadelphia 76ers and Indiana Pacers—all teams that would be playoff teams if the season ended today.

Perhaps their most impressive moment of all, though, came against arguably the most-talked about team in the league, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Playing on the road, the Spurs led at half-time with 17 points.

They would go on to win by nine, making it 2-1 San Antonio's way for the season with no further matches to play.

For all that talk of the Thunder looking unopposed in the NBA, you've simply got to look no further than the team sitting just below them on the competition table, the San Antonio Spurs.

You may want to say that it's just three games and that the difference really is a lot bigger than that; the following table shows just how close the San Antonio Spurs really are to the three big-name teams and championship favorites:

	San Antonio Spurs	Oklahoma City Thunder	Chicago Bulls	Miami Heat
Points	101.6	103.0	96.8	100.6
— Opp.	96.2	96.7	88.8	93.5
FG %	0.471	0.478	0.455	0.478
3-point %	0.387	0.356	0.378	0.373
Off. boards	10.4	10.7	13.9	10.2
— Opp.	9.7	12.5	11.6	11.5
Def. boards	32.3	32.6	32.2	31.5
Tot. boards	42.8	43.3	46.1	41.6
Turnovers	13.3	16.4	14.0	15.0
— Opp.	13.5	14.3	13.3	17.0
Assists	22.6	18.4	23.0	20.6
Steals	7.3	7.6	7.1	9.2
— Opp.	7.4	8.4	7.3	8.4
Tech. fouls	26	57	40	37

According to these statistics provided by ESPN, it's quite obvious that the San Antonio Spurs are not behind any of the other top sides in the league; rather, they're right there with them.

In the current NBA climate that simply sees the Heat, Thunder and Bulls as the teams to beat for the championship, we must not count out the Spurs.

Still ranked fourth in many power rankings behind these three, San Antonio is showing us that you don't have to make the headlines and public discussion to be considered a top team—you simply have to play quality basketball.

Winning basketball games is what counts the most—especially with less than a month remaining in the the regular season—and it's clear that San Antonio got the memo about winning at the right end of the year.

Nobody's talking about them, but I think that suits them just fine.

They'll be talking about them soon enough.

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