Written by Dan Devine at Yahoosports.com
No matter how many times we wonder when their wheels will finally fall off, the San Antonio Spurs just keep rolling, and keep taking care of the first bit of business necessary to win an NBA title: qualifying for the postseason.
The Utah Jazz’s loss to the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday officially punched playoff tickets for Gregg Popovich and company, marking the 19th straight year in which the Spurs will be one of eight teams vying for the right to represent the Western Conference in the NBA Finals. If 19 consecutive playoff trips sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. It’s the NBA’s longest active streak by far — the Atlanta Hawks, with eight straight playoff trips, and the Chicago Bulls, with seven, are their closest competition — and it’s tied for the fourth-longest run of playoff berths in league history.
This is a staggering consistency of high-level achievement, a perpetual pursuit of excellence that makes the Spurs organization one of the most respected in all of professional sports. There’s a flipside to that, though; when you’re always vying for the grand prize and focusing on the long haul, you don’t always even realize when you’ve completed the first leg of your journey. FromJeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News:
They celebrated in exactly the manner you might expect.
“We did what?” asked guard Patty Mills.
“I was not aware,” LaMarcus Aldridge said.
“I don’t even look at it,” point guard Tony Parker said. […]
“We don’t take it for granted,” said Parker, whose team owns the longest active postseason streak in the NBA. “But we also don’t think about it.”
Not content to merely clinch a spot on the strength of another team’s failure, San Antonio went out and smacked around the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday, earning a 97-81 win behind 27 points, six rebounds, five assists and two steals from Kawhi Leonard and a defensively dominant second half in which they limited Detroit to just 30 points on 9-for-36 shooting.
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