San Antonio Spurs: Parker debate spawns horrific takes from Jazz fans

As someone who covers the San Antonio Spurs, there are a lot of great things about social media. Team news comes out instantaneously, I get to interact with other fans, and classic highlights pepper my feed every day. Unfortunately, social media also comes with takes like a few I saw on Wednesday.

The initial debate began when the Twitter account for SLC Dunk, a Utah Jazz coverage site, asked if Rudy Gobert is on pace to be the greatest French basketball player of all time. That in itself didn't bother me too much. I mean, for one, it's a Jazz coverage site. Secondly, the article itself goes on to conclude that Tony Parker will likely still end up as the best Frenchman the NBA's ever seen.

Still, many Spurs fans went on the attack, and even Shannon Sharpe got in on the debate.

But my issue isn't with anything mentioned above. Things really started to go south to me when a Jazz then took to Twitter to say this.

Again, not the worst take I've ever seen when I consider the source. Definitely worse than simply posing the question of Gobert being on track to catch Parker, but still not unexpected from an understandably biased account. The resulting comments from this take then started to go off the rails.

Yup, some guy named Gerald (who cooks awesomely, by the way) decides to call the 2000s era of the NBA "weaker". Just horrific. But their next exchange both irritated and relieved me at the same time.

So at this point, the irritation is from the overall exchange, particularly the bit about those 10 champions being on a "lesser podium". First of all, what are you even talking about? "A lesser podium in my all-time eyes?" Huh?

But the relief then sets in when I see my favorite chef Gerald conveniently set the timeline of the weak era from "1999 to about 2008-09". Ok, guy, let's just be straight with ourselves for a minute.

Are we all going to pretend this is the era in which the San Antonio Spurs weren't crowned champs four times in nine seasons? It was when I saw this mutual agreement that I just realized, wait a second, they're just hurt Jazz fans.

Honestly, I'm not sure why Jazz fans would be so upset with the Spurs of this era besides being jealous. San Antonio only met with Utah once in that timespan in the postseason, beating them 4-1 to go on and sweep the Cavaliers in 2007. Meanwhile, Utah either missed the playoffs or didn't get past the first round from 2000-06. Oh ok, maybe now I see it.

Given all this, dismissing these opinions is fairly easy, but yet another account decided to jump on the "2000s were a weak era" train.

Are we all just going to pretend the 2020 NBA Hall of Fame class wasn't the best we've ever seen? I mean, on top of Tim Duncan there's Kobe Bryant. There's Kevin Garnett. Shaquille O'Neal. There was also Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, and Amare Stoudemire. Oh, and that was just in the Western Conference.

There was Allen Iverson, Vince Carter, Jason Kidd, and LeBron James. Plus, there was a tremendous Detroit Pistons squad that made the NBA Finals two years in a row and at least the Conference Finals six straight times. I'm not sure if these people just have severe memory loss or just started following the NBA in 2018 but this isn't just about to slide unchecked.

Be upset about your team's shortcomings all you want. Compare Gobert to Parker if you want. All of that's fine. But dismissing the entire era of the Spurs' dominance is not only lazy, it's just factually incorrect in every possible way. Educate yourself, new-school fans. Please.