SPURS INSIDE LOOK: THIS TIME, SPURS STAY STRONG WHEN IT COUNTS MOST.

Byline: Joe Stevens Staff Writer

To many Lakers fans, the story line for Game 6 practically had been written before Thursday's contest: Like so many key games, the San Antonio Spurs will fall apart in crunch time and give away a victory.

But Tim Duncan and his teammates made an edit.

Unlike so many key games in recent weeks, the Spurs held together when they had to and found the poise they had been missing to win Thursday and wrap up the Western Conference semifinal series.

With a display of jump shots, layups and put-backs, Duncan took control of the game and finished with a game-high 37 points. The Spurs marched into the Western Conference finals by using their newfound poise to bombard the Lakers 32-13 in the final quarter.

So how did they find the cohesiveness this time?

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich and several of his players pointed to Game 5, when San Antonio eked out a 96-94 victory but were thoroughly out of sync in the fourth quarter.

The Spurs watched the Lakers come back from trailing by 25 points with 2:37 left in the third quarter, then gasped in relief when Robert Horry missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

``This is going to sound really crazy,'' Popovich said. ``But what happened in the last game, I think, was the best medicine we could get. It was better than anything I could tell them.

``Had we continued to win that game by 20 or 25 points, there might have been the possibility that that we would have thought `Hey, we're pretty damn good. These guys can't play with us.' ''

Instead, the Spurs didn't relax.

Duncan dominated whomever the Lakers put on him, including Shaquille O'Neal, by scoring 13 points in the final 6:02 of the third quarter.

The Spurs took a 78-69 lead into the fourth and never let the Lakers back in. San Antonio pushed the lead to 88-72 with 8:43 to play, and things only got worse for the Lakers.

``We just did not want to let up at all,'' Duncan said.

Complimenting Duncan's scoring, second-year guard Tony Parker also was key down the stretch, scoring eight of his 27 points in the fourth quarter.

``We're a young team,'' Parker said. ``But we learn a lot from our mistakes. After we let them back in it in Game 5, we learned from that and made sure we didn't let it happen again.''

As the Spurs' Malik Rose put it: ``We had them down and smelled blood. So we put our foot on them and pushed them down.''