Why are spurs team of the decade when Lakers won more titles and went to more finals?

[DMAVS41]

Winning titles in consecutive years shows dominance, being in the Finals 3 straight years shows dominance of your conference. The Spurs never made it back to even protect their trophy. I don't see anything dominant about the Spurs. Crossover also made a good point, the Spurs won 2 of those 3 when the Lakers dynasty crumbled, not to mention beating the worst of the Shaq/Kobe Laker squads in 03.

Its about the entire body of work. Its team of the decade. Its not which team was the most dominant for a 3 year span.

It basically boils down to what you value. Do you value consistency and year in year out success? Do you value titles and finals trips over winning 50 plus every season?

Stuff like that.

I still lean towards the Spurs because they were relevant each and every year. The Lakers weren't. The Lakers simply had no relevance for 30% of the time frame at hand. Thats a lot of time to not matter.

If you factor in what these teams have to work with, its easily the Spurs. As others have showed, the Lakers payroll is usually significantly higher. If the Spurs operated with the same amount of money, they could technically add a player like Lebron or Howard or Wade and still have less of a payroll than the Lakers.

Stuff like that matters.

[Kobe 4 The Win]

This is a Joke. The Spurs are a great team but LA did more. More Finals appearances. More titles. More consecutive finals appearances. 3 peat. They were also very high profile team that was popular worldwide. As much as the Spurs have accomplished, there aren't too many people outside of San Antonio who know or care about it. F San Antonio.

[twintowers]

What a travesty that David Stern awarded the Spurs the team of the decade, what a complete travesty.

The Lakers clearly were team of the decade, they won a 3 peat with a dynasty, then a two-peat and also went to 2 more finals where they lost for a total of 7 finals appearances in the decade.

And somehow the Spurs win the team of the decade? This is a disgrace.

aa do you remember the gap beetwen shaq leaving and gasol coming one season not making into playoffs and the other almost not making into playoffs and a early exit plus the sacramento stollen series....

[stickfigure87]

coming from a huge laker fan, i agree that the spurs were the team of the decade. they never missed a playoffs, and were a contender every season while the lakers were stranded in mediocrity for a period there.

hard to argue about the rings and the head-to-head matchups, though.

[dunksby]

Dont have anything against the Spurs, but it all comes to Championships. As a contender you enter the playoffs to win the title, not because its cool to be in playoffs.