The first victor is hands down the biggest victor of the offseason and free agency: the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs added All-Star LaMarcus Aldridge and 35-year-old former All-Star David West, which should help preserve Duncan for another championship run.
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A season of less evident tanking begins with a loss, while the Celtics, much more ambitious this year, took advantage.
San Antonio Spurs 106 Oklahoma City Thunder 112: The best game of the night, as Russell Westbrook stole the show from Kevin Durant. But with Leonard, already a Finals MVP and reigning Defensive Player of the Year, and now Aldridge to join him, the Spurs appear well poised with Aldridge just turning 30 to extend their run for at least another five or six years. He has only started 10 regular-season games the past four seasons and hasn’t played more than 24 minutes a contest since the 2010-11 campaign. Of course, there were the Hall of Famers George ” The Iceman” Gervin and Julius “Dr. J” Erving.
Duncan’s adaptation to the NBA’s style of play has always been an underappreciated component of his career, one that has seen his effectiveness plateau as opposed to steadily regress like so many of his peers who entered the league alongside him in the late ’90s. But when he is on the court, he is as good as ever, with only his scoring down slightly in the last two seasons.
It’s pretty amusing going back and finding highlights for these games.
NBA champion Patty Mills is flying the flag for the Wallabies in his faraway basketball-loving outpost of San Antonio.
How far they have to go: All of the pieces are there for San Antonio, now they just have to make them fit.
Magic Johnson and the Showtime LA Lakers twice prevented the Spurs from winning championships in the early 1980’s.
The season is finally here.
The Western Conference is so deep and talented and Golden State is coming off a 67-win season that it’s hard to project a favorite.
Worst case scenario: Howard continues to regress into a non-threat on offense and Beverley accidentally injures James Harden in practice so Houston turns into the Nuggets from few years – a middling team in the West that barely makes or barely misses the playoffs.
If you get a chance, you have to check out the highlights and watch two of the NBA’s all-time greatest players go back and forth to the end. Armed with a sense of jealousy, revenge, and a new asset in Chandler Parsons, the Mavs really wanted this one. Duncan lost almost 20 pounds between the 2010-11 season and the 2011-12 season, evidenced by his clearly-visible stretch marks, as the offense had evolved away from Duncan post-ups and toward point guard Tony Parker operating in pick and rolls with shooters abound.
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The year-to-year success of the Spurs is what has made Duncan’s career transcendent, but it is also what has curiously and egregiously made Duncan’s career an ancillary topic of discussion to the sports landscape.
