The Spurs Are Alive and Ticking

We can hear the hearts of the San Antonio Spurs beating loud and clear. No stethoscope needed.

They could have listened to what everyone said, realized that they blew their chance to snag a game at Staples Center and simply stepped aside so we could all concentrate on watching Sacramento vs. Dallas and Jason Kidd vs. Baron Davis in the other playoff series.

They could have panicked when the Lakers threw their best stretch of ball this postseason at them and the house was rockin’.

They could have lived down to the label attached to them ever since they got swept out of the playoffs last year: that they lacked the heart and tenacity to compete with the Lakers.

Right now the only body part missing is, well, David Robinson’s body. But even with his bad back keeping him out of action, they still got an 88-85 victory in Game 2, they got the one victory they needed early to procure home-court advantage in this series.

No one ever bothered with the matchups when they looked at Lakers vs. Spurs. It was always “Spurs don’t have the heart. Now, can Sacramento or Dallas run-and-gun and shoot their way past the Lakers?”

We now know for sure that the Spurs don’t need any major organ transplants. They did what they had to do.

“It was semi-must win,” said Tim Duncan, never prone to hyperbole.

Now, let’s go into Hubie Brown mode for a minute:

See, if I’m the Spurs, I have to get this game ... be-CAUSE the Lakers just went through a half in which they had a 39% shooting quarter followed by a 19-point quarter. I have both of their big guns in foul trouble. If I still manage to lose this game, I might as well forget the rest of the series and go home and go to sleep on the couch.

Ah--kag-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

It didn’t seem to matter that the Spurs didn’t have Robinson--again. They got contributions from all over the roster.

They had Antonio Daniels scoring 14 points.

They had Danny Ferry, his sprained right wrist still heavily bandaged, pushing in jump shots.

They had Tony Parker zipping past Lakers, breaking down their defense and picking up nine assists.

The Spurs had 24 assists on 34 field goals. That’s getting it done.

“It was a total team effort,” Daniels said.

Everything worked so well that even when Coach Gregg Popovich wanted to call a timeout, they wound up getting a three-point play out of the deal.

Play slowed down, the Spurs coaches and reserves leaked onto the court and everyone stopped. Except Daniels, who raced to the basket, drew a foul on Samaki Walker and made a layup plus the free throw.

“We did not call that,” Popovich said. “That was luck.”

And of course, they had Tim Duncan doing Duncan stuff, like banking home jumpers, pulling down rebounds and blocking shots. He had 27 points, 17 rebounds, five assists and five blocked shots, which was all enough to offset his 10 turnovers.

Duncan’s like a great linebacker in that he’s always around the ball. You see him reaching for many of the rebounds he doesn’t get. He makes every effort to protect the rim as the last line of defense (even if it means getting dunked on by a growing list of Lakers that now includes Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and Robert Horry).

Ever since the playoffs started, the Lakers have been offering games up to whoever wanted to take them.

The Spurs finally took advantage of all the Laker inadequacies and pulled away to a 21-point lead during the first half. They watched the Lakers cut it all the way down to four points during the third period, blinked and pushed the lead back to double-digits.

The Lakers know a little about heart as well. Can’t win back-to-back championships without it. So they were right there at the end again, down by five points with 3:05 remaining, then down by three with half a minute left and Bryant casting one from behind the arc.

It didn’t go down. Neither did the Spurs.

Even if they started tightening up, felt the pressure squeezing in on them and missed several shots down the stretch, they still made the hustle plays and dug out seven offensive rebounds in the fourth quarter.

And on the Lakers’ last gasp, after O’Neal stole the ball from Duncan and got it ahead to Bryant with only two points separating the teams, it was the type of recovery defense they played all night that kept Bryant from tying the game.

Bryant was surrounded. He had Rick Fox open for a moment below the basket, but the defense closed out, and not even Bryant’s wondrous hang time could bail him out of this. There was no where to pass, so he threw the ball back over his body, then ran and chased it down.

Passing to himself. Traveling.

And now this series--and it’s definitely a series now--travels to San Antonio.

Deep in the Texas, there’s heart.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at: j.a.adande@latimes.com.