For Spurs, maybe next year

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LOS ANGELES -- This NBA Western Conference Finals series came full circle for the San Antonio Spurs on Thursday night. They started it by losing a 20-point second-half lead and Game 1 to the Los Angeles Lakers, amid questions about their health and stamina. They ended it by letting a 17-point first-half lead, and ultimately their season, get away in Game 5. And then people were asking just what the future may hold for a franchise that has won four championships but has a number of players getting up there in years, in an already brutal conference that's only going to get tougher. "So when you lose, you got to make changes, right?" Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "If we didn't, we wouldn't have to do a (darn) thing. "No, I think that's too superficial an analysis of any team at the end of the season. Every team makes some kind of changes, so we'll look at our team and see what we need to do. We've made some changes every year, whether we've won or lost. That's no different than usual." The Spurs had, if they wished, any number of rationalizations for their inability to get past the Lakers. They were coming off a tough seven-game series with New Orleans, and the come-from-ahead Game 1 loss put them back on their heels, maybe for the series. The controversy at the end of Game 4, and the foul call that the NBA office now acknowledges should have put Brent Barry on the line with two free throws and a chance to send that game into overtime, didn't help. And Manu Ginobili played all series with a sore left ankle that limited his ability. Ginobili finished Thursday with nine points on 3-for-9 shooting. Yet there is something noble about the way the Spurs handle adversity. Popovich preaches a no-excuses philosophy, and the players generally follow his lead. "The better team won," he said. "You get a seven-game series, you win four games, you're the best team." Which brings us to the missing item on the Spurs' resume. They've established a championship pedigree, with titles in 1999, 2003, '05 and '07. But they haven't won back-to-back, which separates them from the truly memorable teams such as the Lakers of earlier this decade, the '90s Bulls and their double three-peat, and even the Lakers and Pistons of the late '80s. All of those teams won two or three in a row. "Who knows? Maybe we'll do it" in '09 and '10,'' forward Bruce Bowen said. "We're getting closer and closer. Previously we weren't able to get this far, to the Western Conference Finals." Popovich said he never thinks in terms of repeating or defending a championship, only of winning what's in front of his team at the time. And when the players parrot what the coach says, you know they've bought into his philosophy. "If you can assure me that I'd win it next year, I'd be happy," Ginobili said. "But it's not that easy. We had the opportunity this year to win it, and we let it go away. It hurts. We're all disappointed. "We know the core of this team is going to be here for a while, but we feel like we let an opportunity get away. All those three we won, or four, we have them, but we can't be happy because of that. We want to try to win it every year, because we have an opportunity every year. It's upsetting." Ginobili, Tony Parker and Tim Duncan will be back, and Popovich just signed a contract extension, which wraps up the main components of this group. Some other parts may be replaced. For example, we could have seen the last of Robert Horry, who turns 38 in August -- and who didn't stir from the bench Thursday night. "It's no different from any other year," Popovich said. "Whether we've won a championship or not, we've made changes to our team that we thought were appropriate." They'll have a couple of extra weeks to ponder them. It's an every-other-year tradition in San Antonio.(Contact Jim Alexander at jalexander@PE.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)