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SAN ANTONIO. Texas -- Sometimes you have to be careful for what you wish for. I wanted Portland. Well by doggies here they are. I wanted Karl Malone to suffer. Well how's the lowest point output in his playoff career. Well throw out the regular season success that the San Antonio Spurs had because that doesn't mean squat now. Portland gives us match up problems but that doesn't mean that the Spurs can't win the series.
Earlier this morning I told a local sports show that expect this series to go long. Expect this to be a defensive battle. Expect the Vegas line to be less than 190 points combined on any one game in this series. What NBA fans will see on NBC and what those 35,000 lucky fans will see in person is one hell of a defensive battle by two very athletic teams. No run and gun offense here folks. You will see two of the best defensive teams in the league go at it and try to wear each other down.
No one expected this matchup to happen but in a way I'm glad it did. Utah would have been hum drum to me. Just how many times would Jerry Sloan run the pick and roll on the strong side of the court anyway? Yet look at how many times we'll get to see Rasheed Wallace take on Tim Duncan or Sean Elliott try and defend Brian Grant. Look at how we get to see a bunch of lottery picks show that they have the talent to start on somebody else's club. We get to look at such players like Damon Stoudamire and Jimmy Jackson matching up against Avery and Jaren/Mario. In other words these are the best two teams in the west getting it on tomorrow.
Now comes the hard part. Can the home team defeat these upstart Blazers? Well it really does depend upon what you look at for that critera. Remember that article I wrote about experience in the IMHO section? Well this is where that experience comes into play. Oh and don't think I don't hear "But Greg, Utah had experience too and look what happened." Yeah they had playoff experience. Nobody on that Utah team has a championship ring now do they? Will Perdue, Steve Kerr, and Mario Elie have seven, count them, seven rings between them. Jerome Kersey has been to the NBA finals before. Why even Andrew Gaze knows about winning in clutch games as he has been on numerous NBL teams in Australia. Now for the state readers that doesn't mean much but I'll take his experience as well. A win is a win.
So can the Spurs win the series? Sure they can. They have the playoff experience in Sean, David and Avery in being in a Western Conference Final round. Yet they also have the experience of being beyond that with Jerome, Steve, Wil and Mario. To top that experience, they have the desire to get to that next level. Portland has that desire too and I don't want to discount that fact. But you have to agree, San Antonio has been wanting this for a long, long time and this is their window of opportunity.
By Gregory Moore
