No repeat again

Gregg Popovich will never expound on the Spurs' supposed inability to win it all in even years. He says he refuses to even utter the word repeat around his team.
The focus of Pop's thoughts in the immediate aftermath of San Antonio's Game 5 elimination Thursday centered on the fact that his team realized so many of its pre-series goals against the Lakers and still went out in five games.
Said Popovich: "We told our team at the beginning that we wanted to stop their transition offense, which we did. We wanted to hold them in the low 90s, which we did [for the most part]. We wanted to cut their free throws as a team and Kobe's [individually], which we did drastically.
"If we really thought we would be able to do all that, I would think the series would be a win for us. So the fact that we didn't come through offensively is a disappointment, but part of that is a credit to the Lakers."
The Spurs' offensive shortcomings were capsulated by the huge leads they blew on the road to bookend the series. In Game 1, San Antonio let a 20-point lead slip in the final quarter and a half. In Game 5, San Antonio seized an early 17-point lead and gradually faded again, even though its much-maligned bench outscored L.A.'s by 31-23.
A nightmare run for the hobbled Manu Ginobili ended with the NBA's newly minted Sixth Man Award winner failing to score in double figures for the fourth time in five games. Ginobili finally conceded afterward that his arthritic ankle never improved after San Antonio's seven-game struggle in the second round with New Orleans, admitting that his Game 3 breakout was due more to the fact that he sank five 3-pointers in the first half than any restoration of his mobility and explosion.
Tim Duncan, meanwhile, exited the season with a triple-double -- 19 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists -- that proved thoroughly unfulfilling. The Spurs' simply didn't have enough shot-makers to discourage L.A.'s successful defensive swarms on their big man, which hounded Duncan into 7-for-19 shooting that TD made worse by missing five of his 10 free throws.
It remains to be seen if Game 5 was the finale in Spurs colors for Michael Finley (13 points), Kurt Thomas (11 points and seven boards in his longest stint of the series) and/or Brent Barry (11 points). There seems to be little doubt that seven-ringed playoff legend Robert Horry has played his last game for the Spurs, since he didn't get a single second of playing time in this one.
Duncan nonetheless came away from the defeat insisting that he did "love what we had this year" roster-wise. This was the first time in San Antonio's four repeat bids in the Duncan Era that it made it out of the second round and extended the season into the conference finals.
The problem? Unhappy endings against the Lakers are getting repetitive for the Spurs, who have now been eliminated by L.A. four times since Duncan's first championship in 1999: 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2008.
San Antonio's successes in the rivalry were in 1999 (sweeping a second-round series to close out the old Great Western Forum) and in 2003 (halting the Lakers' run of three successive championships in another second-round matchup).
"I have never mentioned [repeat] one time," Popovich said Thursday during his pre-game media address. "Maybe that's my problem, I don't know. Maybe I should have a big sign that says [repeat] every year.
"We've always thought that, you know, if we won a championship, that's great. If it so happened we won a championship in a year where we had won one previously, then it would be called a repeat. But other than that it doesn't mean much to me."
Said Duncan: "We haven't repeat for whatever reason. Luckily enough we have won four times and had the opportunity to repeat. Obviously we'll have to add some pieces to our team and [make] a couple tweaks here and there."