Spurs look to future after losing strange series to Lakers

Whether the defending champion Spurs, winners of four titles in nine years and three in the last five, are going away for good remains to be seen, but they're definitely going away for the summer.

You have to knock the champions out and that's what the Lakers did Thursday night, coming from 17 points behind to beat the Spurs, 100-92, winning the Western Conference finals, 4-1.

Coming off a seven-game series against New Orleans with one day off before the Western finals, the Spurs blew their big chance -- a 20-point lead midway through the third quarter of Game 1.

After that, they were fighting from behind, but they were the Spurs to the end.

In Game 4, they were within one controversial call of forcing overtime.

In Game 5, they were within two points in the last 4:55 before the Lakers put it away.

With Tony Parker their only rotation player under 30 and rising young teams in Utah, New Orleans and Portland along with the Lakers, the question is where they go from here.

"So when you lose, you've got to make changes, right?" Coach Gregg Popovich said. "If we won, we wouldn't have to do a damn thing. . . .

"I thought we did a fine job [this season] . . . I'm proud of the work our guys did. I thought they busted their butts. That doesn't mean you wholesale change things. It means that they're pretty damn solid.

"They just played a team that was better. That's why the Lakers won."

It was a strange series. If they had mixed up the uniforms it would have been hard to tell who dominated whom.

The Lakers trailed by 20 points in two games, by 17 in a third and won a fourth by two points on what the NBA office announced was a bad call.

In an unusual off-day, even for the NBA, the league announced Wednesday that Derek Fisher had actually fouled Brent Barry, who should have shot two free throws at the end of Tuesday's Game 4.

Instead, the league employees who were actually at the game -- the referees -- made no call and the Lakers won, 93-91.

Said Phil Jackson before Game 5: "We can't give it back and we'll take the win and move on."

Not so fast.

The only moving they did for the first part of the game was taking the ball out of the net after the Spurs scored.

San Antonio led by 17 early in the second quarter and was still up by 15 until the Lakers closed the first half with an 11-2 run in the last 2:12.

As the Lakers had done in Game 1 when they scored 14 points in a row in 2:57, they had once more closed the gap without a long, exhausting fight.

After that, it was just young legs and a Kobe Bryant highlight reel in the fourth quarter when he scored 17 of his 39 points.

Afterward, Popovich was asked if he could now disclose how badly Manu Ginobili had been hurting throughout the series.

Said Popovich, a Spur to the bitter end: "No."

mark.heisler@latimes.com