NBA Tournament of Champions: Tim Duncan Bracket Second Round

It was a fairly nice weekend of catching my breath from all the basketball chaos/trying to fight off the beginning of a cold which hopefully isn't as bad as I feared it was for part of Saturday. It won't stop me from getting back to the second round though.

This bracket is very recency-heavy, and probably had the best example of my dad's theory from the first round. When I set this bracket up, I was torn between naming it after Duncan and after Kobe. Considering the two Laker teams Kobe was the definitive alpha dog on that won titles are both still standing in this bracket, maybe I picked wrong. It's too early to tell though; Duncan's one remaining title team still stands, and on the other side, the most recent Texas title winner challenges Kobe and crew.

As a refresher, all series are best of seven (2-2-1-1-1 format), with home court going to the team with the best overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. If you want to see how we got here so far, first round results are here. Let's get moving.

'05 San Antonio Spurs (75-30) vs '10 Los Angeles Lakers (73-32)
Game 1: @ '05 Spurs 106, '10 Lakers 97 (SA leads 1-0)
Game 2: @ '05 Spurs 110, '10 Lakers 101 (SA leads 2-0)
Game 3: '05 Spurs 103, @ '10 Lakers 94 (SA leads 3-0)
Game 4: @ '10 Lakers 99, '05 Spurs 85 (SA leads 3-1)
Game 5: '10 Lakers 108, @ '05 Spurs 85 (SA leads 3-2)
Game 6: '05 Spurs 90, @ '10 Lakers 89 (SA wins 4-2)
Full disclosure: I accidentally simulated a game with their default lineups, and the Lakers won, but Pau Gasol wasn't listed as a starter and didn't play a lot of minutes (as opposed to Lamar Odom, who did start), so I had to fix that while keeping Odom on a reasonable number of minutes close to what he played that season. Maybe that reset did something to Tim Duncan, who went off in Games 1-3 before falling back down to earth the rest of the series. Gasol and Bynum finally showed up in Game 4 for the Lakers, and they just fell short of a comeback in Game 6 at home.

'09 Los Angeles Lakers (81-24) vs '11 Dallas Mavericks (73-30)
Game 1: '11 Mavericks 98, @ '09 Lakers 87 (DAL leads 1-0)
Game 2: @ '09 Lakers 114, '11 Mavericks 97 (Series tied 1-1)
Game 3: @ '11 Mavericks 100, '09 Lakers 95 (DAL leads 2-1)
Game 4: @ '11 Mavericks 88, '09 Lakers 87 (DAL leads 3-1)
Game 5: @ '09 Lakers 100, '11 Mavericks 90 (DAL leads 3-2)
Game 6: @ '11 Mavericks 107, '09 Lakers 98 (DAL wins 4-2)
I don't think I really had to mess with much here. Gasol was getting starts and Odom had decent minutes (a little shy of his season average, but close enough). I think I'm going to let Nathaniel take care of the summary here:

Endlich ist es soweit! Ich bin die große NBA Finals champion der Welt! Kobe und Gasol fühlen sie sich frei, um bogen zu meinen Füßen und call me Big Papa! 

Granted, it's only to the Sweet 16 of the NBA Tournament of Champions, but close enough. Dirk was the main reason why the Mavs are moving on.

To see the updated bracket, click here.

It will be a battle of Texan teams in the next week or 2 for a right to go to the last 8 standing. And if we ticked off the Laker fans for killing off Kobe's two title teams where he was the guy, even better.  Tomorrow though an old Laker legend gets a chance to restore his franchise's honor against a giant, and one of the best teams ever on paper gets a shot at a city that he beat once and is probably just happy to have a rooting interest in basketball for a short time.