The NBA sidekick Hall of Fame

Sean Elliott and Avery Johnson

The San Antonio Spurs team that won it all in 1999 is always a hard team to figure or discuss. Almost immediately after being hired by the Los Angeles Lakers as head coach for the 1999-00 season, Phil Jackson targeted the integrity of the Spurs as champions. They had won in a lockout-shortened season and therefore, in Jackson’s mind, the championship was a mirage. Never mind whatever the City of Angels is. Never mind how easily the Spurs dispensed with the Lakers. Never mind how easily the Spurs dispensed with everyone during the 1999 postseason.

Kevin Garnett’s Minnesota Timberwolves lost a best-of-five series in four games. Shaquille O’Neal’s Lakers were swept just as they had been the year before by the Utah Jazz. The Portland Trail Blazers were also swept. The New York Knicks without Patrick Ewing lasted five games in the NBA Finals. The Spurs finished the postseason with a record of 15-2.

Phil Jackson had every reason to undermine such historic greatness. At the time, the Spurs had just tied the 1991 Chicago Bulls and the 1989 Detroit Pistons for most postseason wins, and only the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers had a better postseason winning percentage than any of those teams. And, if that wasn’t all scary enough, the Spurs were making history on the back of a 22-year-old. In other words, what Jackson had to fear wasn’t so much history in the past tense, but that history might not stop. And he was right.

Tim Duncan’s Spurs would win four more titles, but even the 2003 title team would no longer resemble the squad that carved a parade route along the River Walk. Only Duncan, David Robinson, Malik Rose and Steve Kerr would remain on the roster for that second title, and none of the other titles would be won so easily.

Duncan led the team in points, rebounds and blocks. He was second on the team in assists. He led the team in Win Shares, but was second on the team in VORP. The Admiral, David Robinson, claimed that category for himself. The three players with the top usage rates on the team were Duncan, Robinson and Rose.

With all that being said, Sean Elliott and Avery Johnson hit the two most memorable shots of San Antonio’s postseason run. Elliott had his corner 3 at the buzzer against Portland, and Johnson had his spot-up jumper from about 15 feet to finish the New York Knicks.

Elliott was a two-time All-Star. His first appearance in the game was during the 1992-93 season. He averaged 17.2 points per game that season. His second and final appearance occurred during the 1995-96 season, which also happened to be the year he averaged 20.0 points a game.

He was always more David Robinson’s running mate than Tim Duncan’s. He would play only one full season with the Big Fundamental, and that one full season would be the lockout-shortened one. During Duncan’s rookie campaign, Elliott would suit up for only 36 out of the season’s 82 games, and his battle against a kidney disease and the need for a transplant would cost him games during his final two seasons.

Avery Johnson, too, was more the Admiral’s man than Duncan’s. After winning that first championship in San Antonio, he would play two more years with the Spurs. In total, Johnson would play 16 NBA seasons, and in 10 of those seasons he would play at least some of the year in a Spurs uniform. Only four of those years, though, would be alongside Duncan.

Because so much of their careers were played as Robinson’s supporting cast, all the labels used to reduce the Admiral in stature were also applied to Elliott and Johnson. They were too nice to be winners. They were too polite not to choke. They were good men who just so happened to be good at basketball.

The year David Robinson won the MVP and was then chagrinned by Hakeem Olajuwon in the 1995 Western Conference Finals, Avery Johnson also happened to have one of his best all-around seasons that year, scoring 13.4 points per game and dishing out 8.2 assists. The next year he averaged 13.1 points and 9.6 dimes a night. He finished top-20 in assists on seven different occasions, but never higher than third. His assist percentage is 26th all-time. He is 20th all-time in steals. John Stockton he is not, but he was a very good floor general for nearly a decade.

The highest VORP on the 1995 San Antonio team was David Robinson’s at 1.4. Elliott and Johnson finished the year with marks of 0.7 and 0.5, which placed them second and fourth on the team, with former Bad Boy Dennis Rodman splitting the difference. Elliott and Johnson finished that season second and third on the team in win shares. The next season, players such as Vinny Del Negro and Chuck Person climbed into those higher echelons of team production, and then Robinson played only six games in the 1996-97 season. The team bottomed out and won the lottery.

So much of basketball history is about pecking orders. There are all-time lists. There are decade lists. There are franchise lists. There is the list of names on the active roster. Success, though, in whatever form it takes, is an odd concoction.

A team without Duncan can win 59 games, but not the title. A team without Robinson and no Duncan is only good for 20 wins. Years later, a team without Duncan can win 61 games and no title. A team without Duncan and Kawhi is still good for 47. A star’s long-term success does not rest on trash heaps, but a star’s gravity is necessary for giving the miscellaneous debris any semblance of shape and order.