Disclaimer 1: This is about sports, specifically the NBA Finals.

Disclaimer 2: Don't forget about sending in your podcast questions! mailbag AT trigames DOT net

Henry Abbott said: "I just watched a whole bunch of video and they can't do much with LeBron."

For someone who writes a blog for ESPN, you'd think he'd know a thing or two about how basketball works.

Thank god we have someone like Bill Simmons - who also writes for ESPN - to basically take Abbott's words and smack the poor blogger with them:

"Myth No. 2: It means something that Cleveland beat San Antonio twice this season.

For the first half of the season, San Antonio was a nonthreat compared to Dallas and Phoenix and I stopped monitoring the Spurs almost completely. ...I found myself blindsided by John Hollinger's blog on Feb. 25 that suddenly ranked the Spurs as the best team in basketball.

... Hollinger was right. The Spurs looked like a totally different team. Ginobili's move to the bench on Jan. 28 eventually energized both him and Finley (more comfortable as a starter), and for whatever reason, Duncan raised his defense to another level (I can't remember him ever defending as well). In a two-month stretch from Feb. 13 to April 13, they kicked it into fifth gear by going 25-3 (including a 13-game winning streak), shifted into neutral for the last three games (all losses) with a No. 3 seed locked up, then kicked it back up into fifth by going 12-4 against Denver, Phoenix and Utah in the playoffs."

Of course, Bill Simmons embarrassingly picked the Nets to beat the Spurs in the 2003 NBA Finals - but at least he actually had some decent basketball reasoning behind it. Oh, and as for LeBron in Game 1? A player the Spurs can't do much with? 14 points on 4-of-16 shooting. Yuck. (Maybe the Spurs didn't HAVE to do much with him. First-time jitters? Maybe. But Jordan went off for 36 points in his first Finals game. Then again, he was in his late 20's with more than four years of experience. Then again... whatever - 4-of-16 is abysmal.)

Here's a tip, Mr. Abbott, on how championship Spurs teams and basketball have worked for a long time:

San Antonio has been historically a slow-starting team, and Tim Duncan an equally slow-starting player. Not because they're lazy, mind you, but because they're so consistent, disciplined and focused on the big picture that they don't necessarily want to expend such a large amount of energy early on when the early part of the season should be about learning the league, experimenting with and then finalizing rotations, and then perfecting execution within those rotations to finish the season with a bang. And hey - a slow-starting team that still plays like they do is a pretty damn good slow-starting team. Which is to say: the Spurs aren't so horrifically slow to start - they simply slow-start relative to how they finish out their seasons. I mean, remember how the Cleveland Cavaliers in like, the 2000-2001 season I think, was the darling of the Eastern Conference because they were getting an unexpectedly high number of wins with Clarence Weatherspoon (who never received a compliment higher than "He's a poor man's Charles Barkley" in the prime of his career) as their cornerstone? I mean... really? Fast forward to late season and they're not even in the playoff race by the end of it all. (God I wish I had a record of this - if I'm wrong it'll be really embarrasing, but I swear Cleveland - who was actually decently above .500 early that season leading up to the All-Star Break- ended up with like 30-something wins. *checks the internets* Well, they ended 30-52. Dunno about their All-Star break record)

More importantly, the Playoffs are simply a different beast when the dominant teams decide to take the slow-down-grind-it-out defensive approach, sprinkled with fast break and flash every now and again. I'm still not convinced that Phoenix would have ever taken down San Antonio even with Amare Stoudemire and friends not being suspended. Competitive? That they were. Defensive-minded enough to win? Pffft. Don't make me laugh. Playoffs and the road to a ring - execution, poise, defense, discipline, and yeah - a little bit of luck every now and again. See the Utah Jazz dismantling the coming-off-a-high-and-full-of-forward-momentum Golden State Warriors (something I hated to see from a franchise standpoint since I can't stand the Jazz but was glad to see from a "good basketball" standpoint). See the Miami Heat beating the Dallas Mavericks in the Finals last season, when the Mavs were supposed to be the rising stars of the league (what a crock - how's that MVP trophy looking, Dirk? How did you receive it - on your front porch in the late morning after a night of drinking?). See the Spurs against pretty much the entire Western Conference this Playoffs. See how Detroit zoomed through the East to face LeBron... and then lose that key - that "poise" - to fall to the up-and-comer.

Ah yes, Cleveland is indeed a healthy defensive team. Hell, from a territorial standpoint, I almost want to root for them since I'm an East-coaster. And, yeah, I really like LeBron. But they're young. They've got - and need - time to ripen. They'll get there eventually, and I think it's amazing that they've gotten this far at all (or maybe not - Washington was severely crippled, the Nets were... well... the Nets, and Detroit was on the verge of implosion). But San Antonio has too much experience and discipline - combined with a little bit of that dirty Bruce Bowen play for extra sugary goodness - to even consider Cleveland a major threat. A pesky bug that will make many of the Spurs' wins close (never you mind Game 1, which ended with a nine point spread and the Cavs down by 15 points going into the fourth quarter) and that may even win a game or two, but not a major threat. It's not time. It will come.

The point of all this, really, is to tell Abbott: watch all the early-season tape you want. This is the Playoffs, baby. This is June. This ain't November, this ain't January, and this definitely ain't a young, inexperienced team's time to shine. LeBron will be back, and he will win. But for now, the "boring" Spurs will do it in the manner they know best: efficiently and effectively.

With that said, let's see what happens in Game 2. The Spurs will win their 4th ring, but I'm eager to see how LeBron grows as a player and as a man in this series.

Addendum: It is simultaneously astounding and understandable to me that people complain about the Spurs being "boring." I grasp the concept of people liking fancy passes, tricky fast breaks and crazy three point shooting and scoring streaks and blah blah blah blah. Well, despite the fact that that stuff is indeed fun, you know what's ultimately entertaining to me? Basketball execution that wins games. And dammit, if that means that slow, plodding defense and shot-clock draining plays are what wins games and dominates the opposition, I'd rather watch that. Hell - I hate the Jazz with all my heart. And I still admire, coo and appreciate the crisp, textbook execution of Jerry Sloan and his players.