Coach's Corner

The human being isn't such a smart animal; smart being a relative term. Millions of words have been written by the more verbal of our breed trying to convince us of human superiority. This is delusional thinking, placing people like Phil Jackson above the common gray squirrel in your back yard, just because a fluke of nature equipped us with opposable thumbs to grip a golf club. The most overrated of human advantages is our vaunted ability to think. It's been my repeated experience that we're slow to grasp and recall many fundamental concepts. For example, hack golfers and tennis players understand at a basic, primal level that good things don't last. For a week your forehand and serve rise to levels you don't begin to understand. For two weeks all the obtuse "tips" you've gleaned from the Golf Channel, Golf Digest, and stuff you overhear the muni pro telling a student on the mat next to you, all of it gloms together for two glorious, carefree weeks when all your drives zoom down the middle, your putts roll true, and sand traps turn into interesting stops on the way to another par.

Everyone knows that you don't say, "Well, I've got it now!" We know nothing will kill a good thing faster than when we say the I-got-it words … but we do it anyway. We think it for a while, which we figure is safe. But we can't help ourselves. Finally we say the words out loud, and it ends. Always. We'll again hit the fence with our serves. We'll scull those easy pitch shots over the green, into the lake … just like we have for 25 years. I can't claim to know what a bear thinks when he catches three fish in a row on the first swipe. But bears seem smart to me. I can't imagine them thinking, "I've got it now. Never gonna miss those slippery bastards again!"

We're also prone to surprise. I have these two old boxers that lie around my house all day. They don't ever seem surprised by much. If a fly happens to pass in front of one of their noses, they'll make a lethargic snap at it before going back to sleep. When the pizza man rings the bell, they'll bark. They'll chase the odd bird, run up and down the fence line with Shep, the dog that lives next door. I've never seen them stare at each other in stunned wonder when it starts raining on their sorry asses because they heard the weatherman say the rain chances were only 20%. A keen canine intelligence has never been noted by any of my human friends, but they, along with all their brother/ sister animals, accept what comes their way without animal proclamations of "Nothing can surprise me anymore!"

People though, do this all the time. We're not all that quick on the uptake. I say stuff like, "I'm old and cynical. I've seen it all. Politics and sports just repeat themselves. Different names. Same stories." Then a pious Republican brazenly steals the presidency, laughing like a hyena as his elderly henchmen -- graduates one and all from the Republican Kriegsakademie of Religious Right Wing Politics -- accuse the naïve Democratic lamb of trying to change the "will of the people." Prompting me to exclaim, again, that now I've seen everything.

Which brings us, at last, to the San Antonio Spurs. I wasn't surprised by the outcome. I predicted as much in this column before the playoffs began. If I was locked in an isolation tank for two weeks and then you told me the Spurs lost the first two at home, I'd admit to surprise. I was looking for a six-game series. If you told me San Antonio swept L.A., I'd admit to total shock. It didn't seem possible. If you told me the Spurs (with the best record in the league) got swept by L.A. and the average margin of victory was more than 20 points, the highest margin of victory in any round in -- any year -- ever -- I'd accuse you of trying to get a high-level job on Field Marshal Bush's general staff at my expense.

Yet this is what happened. It was on the television. It must be true. The powerful and proud Spurs were reduced, minute by painful minute, to watery oatmeal. Continuing with the Prussian tone, it was the sports equivalent of watching the German Panzer troops waving gaily from their tanks as they rode through defenseless Paris in the early days of WWII.

This brutal, rapacious assault upon the Spurs probably says more about L.A. than it does about San Antonio. To grasp that Tim Duncan would be the third-best player in Los Angeles is staggering, almost going beyond my ability to comprehend. But it does shed some light on the Spurs, the league's oldest team. Looking at their lineup as the year progressed, I wondered what kind of deal the team had made with the devil. This is a team of so-so role players -- and I include a clearly declining David Robinson in this batch -- around Duncan.

L.A. luridly exposed every Spurs weakness: speed, agility, quickness, power, ballhandling, dribble penetration, shooting, and rebounding. Did I miss anything? The Spurs probably get an edge in team prayers. Maybe.

So I tell myself, "Man, I've seen it all. Nothing will ever surprise me again."