Spurs envy motivating New Orleans
Thursday, May 01, 2008John DeShazier
If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best.
And San Antonio is the best.
So if the Hornets want what the Spurs have -- and every NBA team wants what the Spurs have -- there's only one way for the Hornets to get it: they're going to have to take it from the defending-champions, four-titles-in-the-past-nine-years Spurs by taking down San Antonio in the Western Conference semifinals.
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</noscript> Hey, nobody said this playoff thing was easy. Certainly, not nearly as easy as it was made to look by the Hornets in the first round against Dallas, which was embarrassed by New Orleans in a 4-1 series victory.
"They understand that this is what they play for," Hornets center Tyson Chandler said. "This is the time that the Spurs are at their best. They play for a trophy every year, and that's the level that we want to get to. They're seasoned veterans at every position, and they're not going to beat themselves. We're going to have to go out there and beat them."
Said New Orleans forward David West: "We know how good they are. We know what they've done, but we don't feel like there's any pressure on us to win or do anything.
"We're going to compete and play hard, but we're going in with the attitude that if we play the game the right way, stick to our guns and do what we do, we're going to give ourselves a chance."
Don't dismiss that final word "chance," because however it might be calculated for New Orleans -- as a puncher with knockout power, a legitimate heavyweight or any point in between -- the Hornets absolutely have one.
Too, let's not totally discount what the Hornets did against San Antonio during the regular season, when they split a four-game series. It's significant to note because in the previous two seasons, New Orleans couldn't beat the Big Three of the Western Conference -- San Antonio, Dallas and Phoenix -- anywhere.
But if we're looking for proof that the playoffs totally are different from the regular season, look no further than the fact that the Hornets beat the Mavericks in Dallas in the first round, the franchise's first victory in Dallas since 1998.
"I said (Tuesday) night, we went from losing to Dallas 16, 17, 18 (actually 21) times in a row, to beating them six times in one year," West said. "We're looking at every challenge the same.
"The same approach we took with Dallas, we have to make sure we take with San Antonio. We know we haven't had that much success against them, but this year we altered that. This is just another opportunity to do so."
Big opportunity.
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</noscript> Big, bad opponent.
And the Spurs won't huff and puff like the overmatched Mavericks. San Antonio simply, and silently, will beat your team down.
"They're playing better now than they were in the regular season because they know the stakes are higher," said the Hornets' Byron Scott, who twice previously has coached playoff teams, and both times led his team (the Nets) to the NBA Finals.
"It's a great challenge," Scott added. "Like I said, they're the best team in the league until somebody can knock them off in a seven-game series. We have that opportunity.
"They are the best, there's no doubt about it. We knew (Tuesday) night after we saw (the Spurs eliminate Phoenix) that we had a big challenge ahead of us. But also, I knew we were going to be ready for the task because you want to play against the best team, and they are the best team."
The champs, in fact, eliminated a team specifically built to beat them, dismissing the Suns by the same 4-1 margin the Hornets posted in pulverizing Dallas.
True, San Antonio's margin of victory was smaller than was New Orleans'. Each of the three games it won at home went down to the end, with the Suns having an excellent chance to win them all.
But the Spurs, true to form, were tougher when it counted. Unlike their opponent, they didn't crack.
Now, the Hornets hold the hammer. Now, they get to swing.
"We're not going to go into this series, or any other series, expecting to lose," West said. "We expect to win, we expect to play well, we expect to do the right things to give ourselves a chance to win."
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</noscript> The athletic gospel, as penned or popularized by incomparable smack talker Ric Flair, states that if you want to be The Man, you've got to beat The Man.
San Antonio is The Man. The Hornets want to be.
Now, the Hornets get a chance to see if they can be.
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