Spurs Villain Tournament, Sweet 16: Killers and “Dirty” Players

We’ve gotten through the first round of our quest to determine who the biggest Spurs Villain of all time is, and today, we move on to round two, beginning with the “on-court” side of the bracket (yes, there is a method to the madness). This includes Spurs Killers (players who dominated playoff series and/or made devastating shots or plays that will haunt our minds for all eternity) and Dirty Players (players who committed dirty plays against the Spurs, injured or attempted to injure a Spur, and we will never forgive them).

First, let’s take a quick look back at the results from Round 1, where both brackets saw upsets in the 4 vs. 5 seeds, but otherwise the favorites won by heavy margins:

It’s not too surprising to see the 2026 Knicks killers pass up Serge Ibaka in Spurs Killers considering it was the Finals (as opposed to the Conference Finals) and more recent by 12-14 years. On the Dirty Players side, Kevin Garnett’s notoriety, over-the-top trash talk — which allegedly included mocking Tim Duncan’s deceased mother — and physical, bordering on dirty style of play just barely beat out an admittedly singular but consequential dirty play by Juwan Howard.

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So those are the two upsets, and now we move on to the next round to see who will advance to the Elite 8. (And we apologize for having polls in two places, both here and in The Feed. We know it’s confusing, but embedding Feed polls is the only way to have polls in the main articles for now. They are still the exact same poll, so you can only vote once regardless of where.)

Round 2: Spurs Killers

1. Derek Fisher vs. 5. Jalen Brunson & OG Anunoby

This is another case where recency bias and/or playoff round may or may not play a role, but if you weren’t around to experience the 2000’s Spurs, you have no idea the damage Fisher did to all our psyche back in the day. It was the peak of the Spurs/Lakers rivalry in an era of dynasties, and even though both Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant eventually won 5 championships, Lakers fans never let us forget that they repeated and we didn’t, which according to them meant the Spurs “weren’t a real dynasty”.

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Publish date : 2026-09-04 16:45:00

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