On Wednesday night the San Antonio Spurs will appear in their fifth Western Conference Finals since the turn of the millennium when they travel to Los Angeles to take on the Lakers, who will also be playing in their fifth Western Conference finals in the same time, with both teams having three world championships under their franchise’s belts since Y2K, making this the most important playoff series of the decade.

When basketball historians look back at previous decades in NBA history, there is a team or two who define the said era (minus the 70s where no NBA team won more than two titles, nor did any team win back-to-back titles, mainly because of the growing popularity of the ABA and players going back and forth between the two leagues). In the 50s the league saw its first dynasty in the Minneapolis Lakers. The 60s featured the leagues most dominate dynasty of all time when the Celtics won every title of the decade except in 1967 when the 76ers took it. The 80s saw another Lakers dynasty, winning five titles in the decade and the Celtics took three of the remaining five and the 90s were all about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. This decade, however, has been different from decades past.

The first three years of the millennium seemingly proved that we were in for another decade of Lakers dominance with Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal leading the Lakers to three straight titles, a team that seemed virtually unbeatable in a seven game series, but as we have all learned over the years, good things never last, even when they don’t have to end. The 2001 Lakers mirrored the Roman Empire in 117 AD and Phil Jackson was the Lakers Trajan to the franchises empire. By 2003 we saw signs of the falling empire as egos began to split the team into two factions, one on Bryant’s side and one on O’Neal’s side. And, just like the Roman Empire as it eventually fell to the Byzantine Empire, the Lakers fell by the hand of the Detroit Pistons in 2004 as the Motor City convincingly picked apart a Lakers team that every picked to win the series. The Lakers coach, Phil Jackson, just like previous great military minded Roman leaders, ended up being replaced by a figure head who couldn’t handle the position in Rudy Tomjanovich.

Even with a good young core of players in Bryant, Caron Butler and Lamar Odom, Rudy T was unable to handle the pressure of being the head of the Los Angeles monster and was controlled by the ones he was supposed to be controlling and ended up having to resign only 43 games into the season, leaving career assistant coach Frank Hamblen in control of a mess the Brawny Man couldn’t clean up with one roll of paper towels; leading to the Lakers missing the post season for the first time in 10 years. The next season the Lakers brought in Phil Jackson, but got rid of Butler for Kwame Brown, which led to two more years of misery in Hollywood as the Lakers spent their mid-Aprils getting eliminated by the Phoenix Suns. Fast forward to the Summer of 2008 and Lakers fans didn’t even know if the best shooting guard to lace up a pair of sneakers since Jordan was ever going to put on a Lakers uniform ever again.

Even with all of the off season drama, the Lakers finished with the best record in the deepest Western Conference the NBA has ever seen, a roster full of solid young players who know their roles almost as well as the core of the 1996 Bulls team, and of course, the League’s most valuable player. After blowing past the Denver Nuggets in the first round and out lasting the Utah Jazz, the Lakers are now matched up with a franchise that has been as storied as they have been (at least on the court).

In the last NBA game of the 90s, the Spurs defeated the New York Knicks for what would be their first world championship in franchise history. However, at the turn of the millennium, they saw the Los Angeles Lakers take the next three titles while they could do nothing but watch from their homes in San Antonio.

Before the 2003 season started, legendary center and an even more legendary “good guy,” David Robinson announced that he would retire following the season. The Spurs took a page out of the Lakers book and took advantage of a new arena and won 60 games that season, and would eventually go on to win the title with Tim Duncan winning his second Finals MVP. Duncan would prove in this series that he is the best power forward in the league while being double and triple teamed every time he touched the ball. He found open teammates throughout the series, leading to guys like Stephen Jackson and Steve Kerr having a great series. The next season, the Spurs seemed poised to make another Finals appearance, but after being up 2-0 against the Lakers, they would go on to lose the next four games.

The Spurs would regain their swag in the 2005 season while Gregg Popovich would prove to be the best coach of decade, and the leader of one of the most prestigious franchises of the modern era. Much like the Romanov’s, who were in and out of control of  Russia, the Spurs were in and out of control of the Western Conference throughout the decade and were able to win titles in 2003, 2005 and 2007. The Lakers were the Godunov family to the Spurs’ Romanov. After the Bulls last Finals run, the Spurs soared into the spotlight much like the Romanov family did when the Roman’s princess Anastasia married Ivan IV of Muscovy. After the death of Anastasia, the Romanov family (or the Spurs) lost control of Russia (or the Western Conference) to the Godunov Family (or the Lakers). The Spurs would follow the pattern of the Romanov’s from 2003 to 2007, and now, after the Spurs sped past the Suns (again) and took their time against the Hornets, they are matched up with the Lakers for conference supremacy once again.

Since 2000, the Spurs and the Lakers have meet in the playoffs four times and have played 21 post season game against each other with the Lakers winning three of the series and 13 of the games played. However, the Spurs have been much more consistent during that span. Each team has three titles and four Western Conference Finals appearances. This series transcends itself, and there haven’t even been too many NBA Finals series that have done that in the past (maybe the 1984 Finals where Larry Bird and Magic Johnson would face off in the only Celtics-Lakers Game 7 of the decade and the 1998 Finals where Jordan would lead the Bulls to a second 3-peat in one decade), much less a Conference Final of this magnitude.

I say the series transcends itself because this series isn’t really about this series. This series isn’t just about Tim Duncan battling it out in the paint with Pau Gasol or Kobe Bryant trying to out score the back court of Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. This series isn’t just about Phil Jackson moving his rooks against Gregg Popovich’s knights nor is about the six combined Larry O’Brien Trophies between the two franchises since 2000. This series is about what people are going to think 10—20 years down the road. When people talk professional basketball from 2000 to 2009, they’ll talk about the 2000 dunk contest, the 2003 draft class, the Pistons and either the Lakers or the Spurs. Sure, the other team will be mentioned, and maybe have a feature on a DVD about the decade, but they won’t be the superior team of the more dominant conference, they’ll be the other team, and that is why this series is so important. Either Kobe Bryant or Tim Duncan can engrave their names in stone as definite legends with eight more wins this post season, and either Phil Jackson or Gregg Popovich can add to their ever growing legacies. This series is, in essence, what professional basketball is all about. This will be a series for the ages, a quintessential heavy weight bout that was pre packaged for ESPN Classic. You don’t have to be a Spurs or a Lakers fan to appreciate what this series could mean for the league, you just have to be a fan of basketball. This is going to be a good one, hopefully you’ll be watching, I know I will.

Photos Courtesy of lakers.topbuzz.com and cnn.com, respectively

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