SAN ANTONIO -- The Spurs are on the verge of winning a fifth NBA title since drafting Tim Duncan back in 1997, and have made the playoffs in each of the last 17 seasons.
It’s been an incredible run that manages to keep on keeping on, despite the fact that every few years, the so-called experts who follow the league are quick to declare the team’s impending demise.
Tim Duncan and Tony Parker don’t appear to be the types who would bother trying to turn such nonsense into some form of internal motivation, but at Saturday’s media availability session, both of them separately brought up the fact that many had counted them out at various times in the past.
“We’ve been on our last run for the last five or six years from how everyone wants to put it,” Duncan said. “We show up every year, and we try to put together the best teams and the best runs possible because what people say doesn’t matter to us.”
Parker had a similar response, when asked why this season is different in that people don’t seem to be talking like this might be another of those supposedly final runs through the postseason.
“I don’t know,” Parker said. “You should talk to your colleagues, you know? You’ve been saying that for the last seven, eight years. I don’t know what to say. Every year the journalists keep saying the same stuff that we’re done and it’s the last run. I totally understand. We’re getting older every year, but we always come back and just keep pushing the limits, I guess, especially Timmy and Manu. We just keep playing great basketball.”