High-level meeting

We even would have a meeting between Shaq and mini-Shaq (DeJuan Blair).

The Spurs are in town tonight, and that is cause for celebration. It always was going to be an enticing matchup, but it’s safe to say that nobody foresaw the Spurs arriving here on the fifth of January with a 29-5 record. It is being done in typical San Antonio fashion, which is to say that there are very few Spurs sightings on ESPN’s daily list of top 10 highlight plays. About all they ever get is another somber report testifying to another methodical conquest of another NBA foe.

That, of course, is how Gregg Popovich likes it. The only coaching graduate of a service academy (Air Force ’70) in NBA history isn’t much for on-court histrionics. He insists that his players play the game straight and exhibit proper behavior. One Dennis Rodman was enough.

At the center of it all are the relationships between Popovich and Tim Duncan, and between the two of them and the city of San Antonio. Pop is a low-key guy. Duncan is an even lower-key guy. San Antonio certainly has its charm — college folk rank it second only to New Orleans as a favored site for a Final Four — but it’s not New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or even Boston in terms of media scrutiny and just plain buzz. It’s waaaaay down there, out of the way, often requiring two plane changes to get there. It couldn’t suit Tim Duncan any better.

San Antonio had its own role in professional basketball history even before Pop and Duncan showed up. Under Doug Moe in the late ’70s, the Spurs were a rootin’-tootin’, high-octane team that got up and down the floor and put enormous pressure on the foe to get back on defense. The marquee player was George “The Iceman’’ Gervin, a man who was halfway to his usual 28-point night by “. . . rockets’ red glare.’’ Their one great chance to reach an NBA Finals came in 1979, as they lost a Game 7 to the Bullets when Billy “The Whopper’’ Paultz was called for a bogus offensive foul while setting a pick.