“The Spurs of Odd”

The San Antonio Spurs swept their first two playoff series going (8-0) with all but two of the wins by a double digit margin. Their next opponent, likely the Oklahoma City Thunder, will be much more formidable and that semi-final series is much anticipated. At times sporting events approach their hype but quite often they do not. The Thunder have a 3 games to 1 lead vs the Los Angeles Lakers with game 5 in Oklahoma City.

Speaking of Los Angeles as we often have here, the hectic weekend at the Staples Center produced back to back days of Los Angeles teams losing day/night doubleheaders. On Saturday May 19th the Spurs down (33-11) after one quarter, roared back to beat the Los Angeles Clippers by 10 points. At night, the Thunder got 36 points from Kevin Durant and beat the Lakers by 3 points. On Sunday afternoon, the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes avoided a sweep and sent their semi final series back to the “Desert” with a (2-0) win. The Kings still lead 3 games to 1. At night, the Spurs won by three points to complete a sweep of the Clippers.

Finally, an oddity if you will, about odd or even year championships involving the Spurs. San Antonio, with current player Tim Duncan and current coach Gregg Popovich a part of all four teams, won NBA titles in 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2007. Those are all odd years. These are the only NBA titles for the Spurs (they won none in the defunct ABA, for that matter) and hence are their first four titles. In the history of the 4 major sports leagues only one team has surpassed or even equaled winning their first 4 titles all in either an even or odd year. That franchise is the Dodgers whose first 5 titles were in odd years (1955, 1959, 1963, 1965 and 1981).The Dodgers only other title was in 1988, an even year.