Spurs Voted Best Sports Franchise of the Decade

According to www.nba.com, the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball Association was selected as the most dominant franchise of all sports in the last decade by www.forbes.com. This comes as no surprise to many diehard sports fans that have been following the NBA for the last twenty years. Believe it or not, the San Antonio Spurs have missed the NBA playoffs only four times in their illustrious 35 year history and only once in the past twenty seasons. That accolade is something that will give the Los Angeles Lakers a run for their money because not even they have accomplished such a milestone as a franchise. Unfortunately, there are many basketball fans that are against Forbes Magazine's selection because they believe the award belongs to none other than the Lakers who have had very similar success. These fans do not understand that the Spurs have accumulated more regular season wins than the Lakers have in the past ten years.

It is easy to credit Spurs superstar power forward Tim Duncan for the team's unbelievable success, but the real person to give credit to is their long-time General Manager R.C. Buford. Buford has surrounded Duncan with high quality players who were basically unheard of around the league prior to NBA draft such as Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and DeJuan Blair. Parker and Ginobili were both selected very late in the draft due to the fact that they were international players with no NCAA experience. Tony Parker was barely mentioned from other professional teams prior to his selection by the Spurs. Buford is basically the Nostradamus of the National Basketball Association since his scouting abilities cannot be matched by any other general manager. He knew that Parker would eventually evolved in to the prodigy he is today. Parker did prove this once he became the first European born basketball player to win the NBA Finals MVP award in 2007. Buford was also responsible for the discovery of a Latino all-star by the name of Manu Ginobili who was playing for a professional Italian basketball before joining the Spurs. As predicted by Buford, Ginobili quickly became a serious threat in the NBA by confusing the heck out of his opponents with his remarkable athleticism. R.C. Buford has helped the Spurs win four NBA championships and has quickly become not only a valuable asset to the San Antonio Spurs, but an asset to NBA as well.