SPURS - AMERICANS vs INTERNATIONAL PLAYERS

I always figured the Spurs’ large contingent of international players – Tim Duncan (U.S. Islands), Tony Parker (France), Manu Ginobili (Argentina), Tiago Splitter (Brazil), Boris Diaw (France), Cory Joseph (Canada), Nando De Colo (France), Patty Mills (Australia) and Aron Baynes (Australia) – was the product of three main reasons.

1. Scouting. San Antonio does an excellent job of scouting overseas, which gives the Spurs an edge when it comes to drafting international players who stick in the NBA.

2. Chance. Tony Parker was the best player available when the Spurs’ pick came up in the 2001 draft, but if he had gone one spot earlier, they might have drafted Jamaal Tinsley or Gilbert Arenas instead. Similar situations came into play when San Antonio acquired its other international players.

There’s actually a more-calculated reason. The Spurs prefer international players to American ones. Seth Wickersham of ESPN:

Consider Pop’s brutal assessment that foreign players are “fundamentally harder working than most American kids,” and it’s no wonder the Spurs want to avoid the fate of so many NBA teams

A few months ago, Pop was scouting an opponent. He won’t say which one. On video, Pop saw an international player wide open for a shot, with a confused look on his face. That’s because his point guard, an American, was dribbling in circles. “It has to be a really different experience for him,” Pop says, laughing. “ ’Where am I? Is this is a different game? Is it a different sport?’ ”

Criticism of AAU basketball, which Spurs general manager R.C. Buford engages in, is often heavy-handed and exaggerated. I’ve seen firsthand plenty of America’s top young players sacrifice their individual games to play within a team concept.

But it’s hard to question the culture the Spurs have created, and to their credit, they’ve drafted Kawhi Leonard and given Danny Green multiple chances. There’s a happy medium somewhere, and San Antonio has probably found it.

SPURS - THEY DO MORE WITH LESS

Let's add to the list of reasons why the Spurs are amazing: They do more with less.

One way to gauge how NBA front offices evaluate talent is revisiting where players were selected in the NBA Draft. The average pick of each NBA team's five leading scorers this season was 19.1. San Antonio's was 32—lower than only two teams. In fact, there are just three NBA champions in the last three decades with lower average draft picks than these Spurs: the 2005 Spurs, the 2003 Spurs and the 1999 Spurs.

San Antonio was gifted the No. 1 pick in 1997, when it took Tim Duncan and never let him leave. But his sidekicks over the years—and some of the Spurs stars this season—are players that far too many teams passed over. Tony Parker (2001) and Tiago Splitter (2007) were both picked 28th. Kawhi Leonard was 15th in 2011. Danny Green, who shot 5-for-5 from three-point range on Sunday, entered the league as a second-round pick (46th) in 2009. And there is Manu Ginobili, the 1999 draft's 57th pick, behind 11 guys who never played in the NBA.

GENO AURIEMMA INTERVIEW

Discuss your coaching philosophy and the secret to your success at Connecticut...
It's go out and recruit the best players in the country, get them to come to UConn, coach the hell out of them, make sure they become college All-Americans and win national championships.

If a young first year coach is seeking your advice on how to begin building a winning program what would you tell them...
If I was starting, I would start by recruiting the kind of kids I want to coach, not the kind of kids that would help me win.  I wouldn't make any concessions and recruit players that I thought could get me in trouble but could help us win.  So I would not sacrifice winning for the building blocks of the program.

I'm not saying that would work for everybody but that is how we did it at UConn.  When I started here it took us six years to sign a high school All-American.  In those six years, we won a lot of games and won championships, but we did it with solid building blocks as opposed to having to compromise the kind of people for the expectation of winning.

What is your motivation after 28 years...
28yrs later, I don't feel like I have to prove anything to anybody except my players.  I have to prove to my players that I'm as good as I told them I was when I was recruiting them and I have to prove to my players that I can help them get better.  I can help you get better, win championships, and I can help you become the kind of player you want to be.  Proving that to my players is my motivation.

COACH K - A TEAM WORTHY OF WINNING IT ALL

As Duke basketball heads into its offseason, The Chronicle's Andrew Beaton went one-on-one with head coach Mike Krzyzewski to discuss this team's 2012-13 season and what lies on the horizon for the Blue Devils.

The Chronicle: All season everybody talked about how good the chemistry was. What was it about this team that made it that way?

Mike Krzyzewski: It doesn’t happen all the time, obviously. It doesn’t mean that something bad was happening, but when it happens like this year it’s great. Everybody involved loved this year.

I think the fans loved it because they could see us loving it. I believe it happens because everybody takes ownership. They’re only concern is our place, not their place, and that’s what our group had. I believe the players had that as a result of the leadership of our three seniors.

Our three seniors are really studs. Two of them played hurt. One of them started last spring and said, ‘I’m going to change who I am, I’m going to go for it, I’m going to be with you every step of the way.’ Mason did that every day. Seth’s commitment—everybody knew the extent of his injury. Ryan, while he was hurt and then to come back—at whatever percentage, but much less than 100 percent—and be so cooperative set the tone.

As a coach, if you are constantly giving and not getting back emotional energy, you wear out. We were never worn out because our team, as much as we gave the team, the team gave back.

It was a team worthy of winning 30 games, it was a team worthy of winning the whole thing. A lot of times you can have that and not win the whole thing because the whole thing is very difficult. The only way I could be happier is if we won the whole thing. But I’m not sad about that. I loved my team.

TC: Had you ever been through anything injuries the way this team was?

MK: We don’t publicize our injuries. I’ve never done that because it goes back to my military days where one of your answers was, ‘No excuse, sir.’ In other words, you line up and you go.

You start putting everything out all the time or on a daily basis—every once in a while I’ll talk about Seth’s injury because I wanted people to understand the commitment he was making. I’ve never had a kid going through something like that. For him to have the year he had, are you kidding me?

TC: Seventeen points per game, second in the ACC.

MK: I do imagine this: what would have happened—what could have happened if he was healthy the whole year, individually. He could have led country in scoring. But in saying that, I’m not saying if we had those two guys we’d win. I do think if he had the surgery or has an injury or Ryan doesn’t come back. We might not be an NCAA team. We went through the whole year worrying about that, even if the whole world doesn’t worry about that. We’re also happy because our guys gave it all.

TC: Did that toughness remind you of an old school Duke basketball team?

MK: It was more of an old-school Duke basketball team because you had the ability to be old school. I don’t see how you can be old school unless you have people who have gone through the experiences. Old school is about going through things for a longer period of time.

When you have senior leadership, and those guys have been through it—all three of those guys from their freshman year, none of them had a prominent role. Seth didn’t play, Ryan because of sitting out, and Mason had the biggest role but certainly wasn’t in the top five. And Ryan was way down the ladder in that. So they were able to experience the program in a growth process—basically working in the mail room to being the top executive. You’re more apt to be old school because they’ve experience all of that, and it can help the guys going through those experiences now much better.

TC: Do you see the same potential for that next year with not only Josh Hairston and Tyler Thornton, but also Andre Dawkins returning to the team?

MK: Well you would hope that the experiences that those three guys have had would equate to help for everybody. The one thing is that our three best players were our three seniors this past year. Next year, our three best players will not be those three guys. They can be key players, they can start. One or two of them might start.

This year, you not only had them being seniors but they were the best players and the most important players. That dynamic will be a little bit different.

TC: For those returning guys, what are the most important things for them to be focusing on this summer as they transition?

MK: For the returning players, it’s all about individual improvement during the off season—what they have to do to change their bodies or keep their bodies at a certain level, the skill work they need to practice on and the maturity that needs to be developed. And then the maturity that needs to be developed: what did you learn and how are you going to change that into being a more mature player.

Our team was very mature this year. To me, that will be one of the biggest things about next year’s team. Can we have a high level of maturity? But that means you keep your eyes focused on what we are all doing and not getting sidetracked by what you’re doing.

Maturity equates to a team vision much more so than individual vision. Your individual vision should be incorporated into the team vision. We talk to our guys about that. When reality sets in and you’re the ninth man now, and you thought it would be really good and it’s not going as well, or the role you anticipated someone has and now it’s something different and now you have to adapt. Those are mature things.

When we’ve had a team worthy of winning, that’s what we’ve had. Our seniors, the four years that they participated, they were on two teams that were worthy of winning. One we did win and then this past year. Their sophomore year, we weren’t cohesive enough because of the injury problem to Kyrie to show that we were worthy, but we were close. Their junior year, we were worthy of losing in the first round, and we got what we were worthy of.

TC: So when you do have another team that wins a national championship, are you getting a tattoo?

MK: I will never get a tattoo. I promise you. Even if I promised my team that—I don’t like to break promises—but that will never happen. A tattoo on a 60-year old, on my body, would not be a pleasant sight. So that’s not going to happen.

SPURS - POUNDING THE ROCK

“When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

“That was a long time ago. Well, I guess I never really… well let me just say it was a long time ago. It was back in the 90s and I was reading something about immigration in New York way back when, that kind of thing, and he was a reformer. He fought for better housing and better conditions, working conditions, that type of thing, for immigrants of all countries.

“He was relentless at it and that quote that we use is obviously his quote, and I thought it embodied anyone’s effort in any endeavor, really. It doesn’t have to be basketball. It can be a musical instrument or it can be learning mathematics or going to law school or figuring out how to turn the water off in your house because you’re an idiot. If you can’t figure that out you just keep looking, keep trying, keep going.

“The way he said it was very eloquent, and I thought that it fit. You get tired of all that other junk. ‘Winners never do this’ or ‘Losers always quit.’ ‘There’s no I in team’ — all the typical, trite silly crap you see in locker rooms at all levels. It’s always turned me off, so I thought that this was maybe a little bit more, I don’t know, intelligent. A different way to get to the guys and make them think about it.

“They’ve had that in their brains for a long time. They’re probably totally tired of it, but it’s worked well for us… They’ve been brainwashed pretty good by now… I’m leaving right after Ghadafi. They’re going to get rid of me… I’ve been here too long.”

SPURS - BORING?

The Spurs get the "boring" label because basketball is supposed to be hard. As San Antonio heads to its fifth finals since 1999, its fourth with its multinational power trio intact, you wonder if they've made some cosmic bargain, or discovered a real-life cheat code, because the alternative—that they're just this good, again—is just exhausting.

San Antonio closed out a sweep of Memphis with a 93-86 win in which they took the lead and never let their guard down long enough to let the Grizzlies get back into it. Zach Randolph, resurgent in Memphis, was held to 30 percent shooting in the series. Mike Conley was shut down. Marc Gasol was never allowed to score 20. This sort of humdrum dominance is infinitely complex, but because of its totality, it manifests itself in absolutes and seems simple, unsexy.

Show me another playoff team whose leading scorer is a point guard, a true point guard who also leads in assists and makes everyone he plays with better, and I guarantee that team's not labeled boring. Tony Parker, the youngest of San Antonio's Big Three at age 31, is having the best season of his career, and maybe, just maybe, another finals trip will get him recognized as the league's best right now after springing for 37 points on 15-of-21 from the field:

But that's the problem when greatness is surrounded by greatness—the superlatives go to the team instead of the individuals. You don't see Parker mentioned as the NBA's top point guard, but he might be. You rarely see Tim Duncan listed as the best power forward of all time, but he probably is. Even Manu Ginobili, still doing his thing into his second decade as the league's most reliable sixth man, can't escape the perception that he's a cog in Gregg Popovich's machine. (Paradoxically, even Popovich doesn't get the credit he deserves, because he gets to coach Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, and Manu Ginobili.)

But nobody fell into anyone's laps; the Spurs have just been a model franchise that does nearly everything right. In 1999, after winning a title, San Antonio used the 57th overall pick on Ginobili, and stashed him for a few years. In 2001, after finishing with the league's best record, the Spurs drafted Parker with the final pick in the first round. The front office has done a remarkable job of fitting the right pieces into the core: Kawhi Leonard is doing Bruce Bowen things, Tiago Splitter is the latest foreign center to thrive in San Antonio.

Dominance is supposed to be fitful. The Lakers' five-title decade was divided neatly into two separate reigns. When the Bulls started winning, they didn't stop as long as they had Jordan. But these Spurs don't do things that way. There's always been a sense that they grasp the long view of NBA fortunes, that an early-round exit isn't necessarily a sign to blow up and start over.

“I was 21 when I won my first one,” Parker said. “You think it’s easy and you’re going to go back every year. In 2007 we won our third one in five years, and you think it’s going to keep coming, and I’m 25, and six years goes by, and every year it gets tougher and tougher. … If we go all the way it’ll definitely be my favorite because it gets harder and harder.”

Listen to the man. This wasn't easy. Even on what seems like cruise control at times, you don't win 58 games and go to the finals without a struggle, not when your crucial pieces are 31, 35, and 37. Boring? There's nothing boring about being really, really good at basketball, no matter how many times it gets rewarded.