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SAN ANTONIO – If you ask the San Antonio Spurs about the greatest sports dynasty of our time, they’ll probably caution you not to rush to judgment.

After all, they might not be finished.

When the Spurs put the finishing touches on the destruction of the Miami Heat on Sunday, with one last whipping in Game 5 of The NBA Finals, maybe the only thing more impressive than their sheer dominance of the two-time defending champion was the simple fact that the Spurs, inexorably, keep on winning.

Kawhi Leonard, the Spurs’ taciturn forward who was named The Finals MVP, was only 7 years old when his teammate Tim Duncan raised the same trophy over his head in 1999, when the Spurs won their first title by beating the New York Knicks. Through the interim, the Los Angeles Lakers have risen and fallen and risen and fallen again, and now lie in a ditch so deep they might need more than a long rope to climb out. The Boston Celtics resurrected their past glory for a few shining seasons but have now fallen on hard times. The would-be contenders, the Oklahoma City Thunder and Memphis Grizzlies, have changed cities and, in one case, changed names.

The Spurs have changed, too, from a deliberate, rugged team built on a foundation of tough, unyielding defensive chops to a work of offensive artistry that emphasizes quickness, ball movement and 3-point shooting.

What’s stayed the same is an organizational philosophy that promotes professionalism, selflessness and sacrifice. It is those core beliefs, and the way they have been carried out over so many years, that have produced the five championships that solidify San Antonio’s case as one of North America’s greatest sports dynasties ever.

When asked by ESPN’s Stuart Scott the biggest difference between the two titles, 15 years apart, Duncan gave the simplest and most accurate answer: “Fifteen years, probably?”

A coach, a player

No other player-coach/manager combination, outside of Duncan and Gregg Popovich, has climbed twin peaks of excellence over such an extended period. The New York Yankees have long been the American measuring stick of sports royalty with their 27 World Series titles. Only they have had a sustained era of excellence that lasted for 1 1/2 decades (1923-38), that under two managers, Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy.

Gregg Popovich, Tim Duncan (Andrew D Bernstein/NBAE)

Gregg Popovich and Tim Duncan celebrate the 2014 title.

(Andrew D Bernstein/NBAE)

But the leagues were much smaller then and so they — along with the achievements of George Mikan’s Minneapolis Lakers and Bill Russell’s Celtics — must be viewed as something different, something encased in Jurassic amber.

In the so-called modern era of the last 30 years, the Yankees won four titles in five years (1996-2000). The NFL’s San Francisco 49ers won five Super Bowls (1982 to 1995), but with a change of coaches and different star quarterbacks. The New York Islanders captured the Stanley Cup four straight times (1980-83).

The NBA’s only real challengers of the past three decades are the Showtime Lakers, who won five championships and played in nine Finals from 1980 to 1991, Michael Jordan’s Bulls with their pair of “three-peats” (1991-93 and 1996-98) and the Lakers with their five titles of the Kobe Bryant Era — though they must be split into separate entities, with and without Shaquille O’Neal.

It seems only Phil Jackson, who coached those Bulls and then the Lakers, questions the Spurs’ pedigree as a dynasty because they have never won back-to-back.

Still, Merriam-Webster defines a dynasty as “a powerful group or family that maintains its position for a long time.”

“I consider the question irrelevant because it’s somebody else’s term for greatness,” former NBA coach and current ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy told the San Antonio Express-News. “You could put whatever word on it you want as long as it speaks to their greatness. Sustained greatness is the hardest thing to achieve in any walk of life. And that’s exactly what the Spurs have stood for.”

Sustaining the greatness

Since Duncan arrived in San Antonio in 1997, the Spurs have won 1,099 of 1,585 games (regular season and playoffs combined), a stunning 69.3 winning percentage. While the Lakers, Pistons and Celtics have blazed across the sky to win championships in that

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