2012 N.B.A. Playoffs - Spurs Miss That Spring in Their Step - NYTimes.com In the end, or what may well have been the prelude to it for the Spurs, a team so admired for its precision and purpose - the perfect basketball unit, it has often seemed - lacked the one player to singularly rise to the occasion. We mean this literally, not merely in the jargon of sports. Coach Gregg Popovich had to know it as he watched Manu Ginobili desperately try to get enough space in that drunken sailor way of his to launch the 3-pointer needed to rescue the Spurs from facing oblivion in an N.B.A. Western Conference finals elimination game Wednesday night in Oklahoma City. With his aging stars in determined pursuit of the younger, swifter Thunder late Monday night, Popovich had watched what pure elevation and athleticism can achieve in moments when Coach can only cross his fingers. He saw Russell Westbrook pull up on the right side, launch a pogo stick jumper to give the Thunder a 4-point lead. He saw James Harden forgo the Kevin Durant option late in the shot clock and drain a step-back, decisive 3-pointer with 28.8 seconds left with the Spurs" Kawhi Leonard almost close enough to perform laser eye surgery. And this was after enduring Durant's 22-point explosion in the second half, including one don't-try-this-at-home demonstration in which the so-called Durantula back-rimmed a driving dunk, retrieved the long rebound and calmly levitated like an Avenger for a baseline jumper that sent a shiver through the AT&T Center. When the game was over, when Durant and the Thunder had survived the tornado named Ginobili and their youthful frivolity for a 108-103 Game 5 victory, a defiant Popovich said: "We've been competing for three quarters in the past and tonight we competed for two quarters. If we don't get that straight it'll be over on Wednesday. For coaches, and especially the successful ones, it is always about effort because they have already experienced the beautiful marriage it can have with ability. But not this night, or at least not in the endgame sequence when the otherwise sagging Thunder could do what the Spurs simply could not: rise and shine. The great Oscar Robertson has often complained that the 21st-century player knows only how to play in the air, an overstatement borne of some truth. Of course, stylistic extremism - airborne or grounded - is no advisable path to glory. But the inability to play off the floor will no doubt define the Spurs" undoing should they fail to bring the series back to San Antonio for Game 7. Those of us who have admired the Spurs through the four-championship Tim Duncan era flirted with a state of awe during their 20-game winning streak that spanned the final 10 games of the regular season and the opening 10 of the playoffs. With an infusion of new support players, some younger legs, Popovich appeared to have the Spurs in great position to rinse one more title out of the star triumvirate of Duncan, Ginobili and Tony Parker. But while one possession cannot do justice to a tense and riveting struggle in what shaped up as the series swing game, the Spurs" last chance to tie did put a magnifying glass to the crack in their aging infrastructure. All the talk about the democracy of offense went the way of the two-hand set shot when the trapping Spurs, trailing, 106-103, forced a Thunder turnover in the backcourt with 15.5 seconds remaining. How many teams must remove their scoring point guard and de facto most valuable player at such a moment? But to the bench went Parker, who does not have reliable 3-point range and whose early series penetration off the vaunted high screen-and-roll had been quieted by Westbrook's gangly pursuit. Danny Green, the starting shooting guard most of the season, surrendered his position to Ginobili in the Spurs" near-desperate hour and played only 3 minutes 37 seconds. Gary Neal, a valuable sub with long-distance range, missed all six of his shots and was not returning for more. Matt Bonner, another 3-point bench bomber, played less than a minute. Leonard, a rookie forward with upside, was stationed in the right corner, briefly open, but was only a decoy. Boris Diaw never left the paint after setting a low screen for Ginobili. The Thunder's Serge Ibaka was caught in a switch on Stephen Jackson at the top of the key and wisely stayed with him. "We were trusting for everybody to cover for each other," said Kendrick Perkins, the Thunder center, who had fouled out and watched his mates play the kind of defense Perkins once helped anchor during a title run in Boston. We just wanted to guard the line, run them off the 3. It had to help that the intended shooter was as obvious as the outcome at the Alamo. Given such predictability, maybe Popovich should have had the Spurs try for a quick 2 points and opted to press for another turnover or foul. Instead, Ginobili, with the ball, was chased by Durant and Harden into the left corner and had to dump it to Duncan on the wing at the 3-point line. Ginobili got it back, retreating behind Duncan's screen, but he shot falling away, never getting his legs into it, and back-rimmed it wide. "Not as open as we wanted but at least I could let it fly," he would say after his valiant 34-point, 7-assist, 6-rebound night that ultimately felt empty. With all due respect, letting it fly does not measure up to flying by oneself. We can imagine what Durant would have done in that setting. We saw what Ginobili and his teammates could not do and why the Spurs - best known for flying under the publicity radar - may no longer be capable of soaring to championship heights.