Spurs still feeling Gasol deal

A 7-foot Spaniard with floppy hair and a point guard's passing skills arrived on his doorstep in Los Angeles, all but gift-wrapped with a card that read, “From Memphis, with love.”

Pau Gasol, it turned out, was just what Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers needed to return to the NBA's pinnacle.

“If we could have designed a player to make us a contender, it would have been him,” Bryant said. “It was an absolutely perfect fit.”

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich was understandably less enthralled with the events of Feb. 1, 2008. At the time, he called what Memphis did — swapping an All-Star to the Lakers for a collection of what at the time were seen as spare parts — “beyond comprehension.”

Popovich's stance on the deal has since softened — “I was just trying to be a wise-ass,” he said recently — but its impact on the Western Conference power structure has not.

“It changed the whole landscape in the West,” Popovich said.

Nowhere has that seismic shift been felt more violently than in San Antonio. Months after his arrival, the Gasol-infused Lakers crushed the Spurs' hopes of a championship repeat with a five-game shellacking in the 2008 Western Conference finals.

The Lakers have been the West's top dog ever since, last season winning their first NBA championship since Shaquille O'Neal, their last All-Star big man, skipped town.

As the Spurs return to Staples Center tonight, they are still coming to grips with how to contend with Gasol at the center of a potent Lakers lineup.