Finals in hindsight

Some random, retrospective thoughts on the NBA Finals:

How on Earth does Tim Duncan get to be MVP over Manu Ginobili? Duncan finished with a team-high 25 points in Game 7, yes, and his second half probably was the biggest factor in the Spurs clinching the deciding game, but who had the better series was no contest.
Duncan suffered through arguably his worst playoff series as a pro, missing shots, getting pushed around down low by a far bigger Detroit front line. Ginobili was San Antonio's charismatic spark from Game 1, when he went off for 36 points.
Duncan came up big for one half, but he wasn't the biggest reason the Spurs won the title. Ginobili was.

Having said that, the Spurs are built in the mold of the New England Patriots in that their greatness is the product of a system and not all-star talent at every position. Duncan, and possibly Ginobili, are the only players who could go anywhere and be the type of players they are with the Spurs. Tony Parker, Bruce Bowen, Nazr Mohammed and the rest of the roster are role players made to fit.

The Pistons are the same way. They probably lost the title only because they didn't have homecourt advantage. Their performance in winning game six on the road has to be among the greatest backs-against-the-wall performances in Finals history.

Larry Brown will never approach the number of titles Phil Jackson has. But I think he is a better coach. Much like Jackson with the Lakers, the Pistons didn't become champions until Brown took the reigns. Jackson is a very good coach, but he had Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal on his teams. Brown has three Finals appearances and an NBA title to his credit, and the best player he probably ever coached, talentwise, was Allen Iverson.

How good of a coach is Brown? Look at Detroit's roster, and look at where some of their players were prior to putting on a Pistons uniform. Chauncey Billups, last year's Finals MVP, was a shot-chucking journeyman who played on four teams in five years prior to coming to Detroit. Brown molded Billups into a modern-day Mark Jackson, an oversized point guard who compensates for his lack of ball-handling skills with physical play and ability to overmatch smaller guards by posting up.

Don't look now, but Gregg Popovich is one-third of the way to Jackson's nine-title total, a mark shared by Red Auerbach. Popovich now has more NBA coaching titles than Rudy Tomjanovich or Chuck Daly, but has yet to achieve the legendary status of those two.

Are you watching this, baseball? a team from San Antonio, a mid-sized market, now owns three of the last seven NBA titles. That's a dynasty by my count. They probably aren't done winning titles, either.
If the Spurs were a baseball team, Tim Duncan would already be a Yankee and .500 would be a good season.