NBA: Flagrantly defensive Spurs thrive on playoff adversity

The San Antonio Spurs have been in the driver's seat for most of this NBA season. They finished with the best record in the league. They won home court advantage and all that comes with being the top seed in the NBA's Western Conference. So why are they being so flagrantly defensive in this year's playoffs?

With all of the pluses on their side weren't these playoffs supposed to be a breeze for the defenders of the Alamodome? Shouldn't the best in the west sweep through these early rounds without breaking a sweat?

Round one against the hapless Minnesota Timberwolves may have come easy but round two against the hard-hitting Dallas Mavericks has been a different story. The wins are still coming but these Spurs are prospering on a high level of adversity and they don't particularly like it one bit. Spurs coach Gregg "Lottsobitchin" Popovich thinks his troops are getting beaten on unceremoniously and he wants the NBA brass to do something about it.

Game one of this "golden gloves" second series found the Spurs and Mavs trading jabs and feeling each other out right down to the last seconds of the first half of game 1. That's when Dallas' Juwan Howard loosened things up unleashing a huge roundhouse right-handed block that sent Spurs guard "DA" Derek Anderson crashing to the floor for perhaps the final time this season.

San Antonio's second leading scorer left the floor with a separated right shoulder and "Hurricane" Howard was taken away with a flagrant foul and an instant ejection. Dallas fans explained that he didn't mean any harm, Juwan apologized profusely and Spurs fans thought Howard should have been strung up from the nearest 10-foot backboard.

Either way, as the first half ended San Antonio clung to a 13-point lead with Anderson out indefinitely, "The Admiral" sitting with 3 fouls and Dallas' Shawn Bradley swatting away anything lower than the dome ceiling. If there ever was an opportunity for these Spurs to go schizoid, this was it.

Coming out of the break Dallas rattled off three quick baskets, cutting the lead to 7, and it looked like the Spurs' psyches might have made a run for the border. Popovich called a quick timeout to remind his troops that "DA" had not been pronounced dead and they needed to rally before things got out of hand.

The "men on the hot dome roof" this night turned out to be Tim Duncan, who slammed down 31, and Anderson's replacement, "AD" Antonio Daniels, who replaced the hole in San Antonio's collective heart with 13 points of his own. The Spurs went the rest of the way clamping down on Dallas' Big 4 (Howard, Nash, Finley and Nowitzki) to a mere 29% shooting accuracy and allowing the Mavs their lowest offensive output of these playoffs.

Spurs win 94-78, but putting Dallas away by 16 was not an easy task and no one was saying that game 2 would be any easier. This team and this city were seething over what seemed to be a great misunderstanding by all the rest of mankind. One-of-their-own had been put down and no one really paid the price for that. Wait till next time, they screamed. You just wait! Suddenly the Alamodome became the "Terrordome".

Two days later things appeared to only get tougher for the Spurs in this conference semi-final series. With "DA' at home with his future in a sling, and footage of his forced crash-and-burn running 24-7 on the tube, San Antonio came out for game 2 with fire in their eyes hoping to even the emotional score somehow.

But the refs had different plans for game 2. They were calling the game high and tight and everything seemed to go against the silver and black from the get-go. This game was close in the early going with T-Dunk missing four of his first five and "AD" collecting two fouls in the first nine minutes.

The suddenly angelic Mavs hit everything they got from the charity stripe in the first half while the ticked-off Spurs hit only two in the first stanza and got not a single opportunity in the second, tying a franchise playoff record for free-throw futility in a quarter.

Then came the flagrant foul that wasn't. In what could easily be the greatest payback call of all time, Danny Ferry was whistled for turning pirouettes in mid-air and wiping sweat from the chest of Juwan Howard as he knifed to the basket through three defenders.

The shot got blocked, whistles blew, Gregg Popovich exploded and was escorted to the San Antonio river for margaritas and bile nachos. The Mavs went ahead 35-33 after shooting an endless stream of technical foul shots and the Spurs once again fell behind the proverbial 8-ball. Here they were with no Derek Anderson, no head coach and a bunch of feisty Mavericks churning up their home floor. What was a heart-stricken veteran team to do?

Dig in them spurs, that's what! Dig 'em in hard! Down by only 4 at the break the Mavs hung in and were still within 3 with 10:09 left in the third. But San Antonio took the defensive birch to Dallas again going on an 18-4 tear during a suffocating 5 minute defensive route to pull away 68-51 with 4:28 left in the third.

Dallas never got within 8 after that and the battle savvy Spurs notched another hard fought emotional victory holding these Mavericks, who averaged 45.9% shooting percentage during the regular season, to a new playoff low 34.2% in game 2.

Game 3 in Dallas was played much to the same tune. Dallas hung in early, down by only 5 at the half, when San Antonio decided enough was enough and once again smothered the flailing Mavs allowing them a miserable 34.7% shooting success for the night.

Dallas wasn't even getting good looks in lockeroom mirrors as San Antonio's blanketing, in your face defense denied them their usual space out on the perimeter where they had roamed free all season long. The Mavs missed an excruciating 16 straight shots to end the third period and going 2 minutes deep into the fourth. So sad! Too bad!

The Spurs then strutted their own offensive stuff. With Duncan and Robinson pounding and drawing double-teams under the basket San Antonio broke out with torrid 3-point explosions of their own in the third period of each game against Dallas. In game 3, with 8 minutes left, the Spurs burst out on a 13-2 run over four minutes that put them up by as much as 28 points and never less than 13 before game's end.

Much had been made of how these Dallas Mavericks appear to have finally grown out of their soft, gushy exterior of old and grown into a hard hitting, give-no-quarter bunch of NBA badboys. But one can't lose sight of the fact that these San Antonio Spurs are a superior blend of young NBA floor runners and levelheaded, battle-hardened veterans who can play some of the best roundball defense you have ever seen.

Whoever comes up next for the surging San Antonio better have their gloves up and best moves working. These mature, flagrantly defensive Spurs have shown they can indeed live and thrive in the midst of the adversity that characterizes this year's brass-knucks, suckerpunch laden NBA playoff free-for-all.