The Spurs have always been one team that the Nuggets never seemed to be able to defeat, no matter who was leading the roster, and the five-time champions defeated our team again on Sunday.

Over the years, the Spurs have been the exemplar of a small-market team that has been successful. Yes, they were lucky in winning two draft lotteries with transformative players (David Robinson and Tim Duncan), but they have been so successful for so long because they were able to supplement their drafted stars by bringing in superb personnel in all aspects of the organisation.

We often look optimistically at the future, using lessons from successful enterprises (and The Stiffs' Andrew Feinstein did that shortly after this year's championship), but we can also use San Antonio as a lens into viewing the Nuggets' present and recent past.

Overall

Since getting lucky that Detroit grabbed the poster child for international draft busts, the Nuggets have been above-average and more consistent than any team other than the Spurs.

Starting from 2003 when the Nuggets drafted Carmelo Anthony, the Nuggets have tried various moves to become a great team using the resources at their disposal, but each time failed to get over the hump due to various circumstances.

The Nuggets had one of the best coaches in the league for most of that time, they took risks on various mid-level free agent signings and star player trades, while finding a couple of above-average players late in the draft.

Many teams have sought to clear everything out and to rebuild from nothing; the Nuggets have arguably been the best and most consistent team at using limited resources to build on the fly and remain competitive from year to year. The Nuggets had the second-longest active playoff streak before it was snapped last year – only the Spurs' streak was longer.

The last two years were an exception to the Nuggets' pattern of remaining competitive, but without last year's deluge of injuries the Nuggets would have been at worst a fringe playoff contender just behind Phoenix; this year the Nuggets haven't improved much in the standings due to rust from players returning from injuries and due to playing in the brutal Western Conference.

Before the Nuggets drafted Melo, they were among the league's worst franchises for a decade, which was more due to incompetence and ownership than contemporary tank-and-rebuild strategies.

Meanwhile in Texas, by nearly every account, the Spurs do things well – drafting, developing, coaching, execution and roster building are among the major pillars.

The Spurs have been the most consistently successful team in the last 25 years, they are held aloft as a team to emulate, and their assistant coaches and office staff are annually poached. Although they deserved the championships they won, they got lucky along the way to each, but on a similar note misfortune stopped them from accruing more.

Drafting

The Nuggets have been mostly unlucky with the ping pong balls, and they spent many years drafting poorly in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Then the 2003 draft came, and the Detroit Pistons took a European prospect, leaving Syracuse freshman champion Carmelo Anthony to the Nuggets, beginning a period of 10 straight playoff appearances.

After that, the only Nuggets draft pick who became a good rotation player on the Nuggets was Kenneth Faried (22nd in 2011). Until recently, the Nuggets hardly used the draft to get any young players. In the 10 years following the 2003 draft, the Nuggets only drafted 15 more players, including no first-round picks from 2006-2010. The Nuggets have changed recently, with seven picks in the last three years, including three this year and in 2012.

The Nuggets often have used draft picks as part of trades, and they've acquired players during the draft from other teams, including 2009 (Ty Lawson) and 2002 (Nene). The only other two significant players drafted by the Nuggets are Jameer Nelson (2004) and Jarrett Jack (2005), who played spot roles while with other teams.

Meanwhile, the Spurs famously picked Manu Ginobli at No. 57 in 1999 and Tony Parker at No. 28 in 2001. They have also snagged regular role playing contributors – some of them got their time in San Antonio while others on different teams – including in the first round John Salmons, Leandro Barbosa, Beno Udrih, Ian Mahinmi, Tiago Splitter and George Hill; but especially in the second round of the draft with Luis Scola, DeJuan Blain and Goran Dragic.

The Spurs' draft success is partly systematic in terms of player development – its own players fit both a personality type and role on the team – as well as scouting. The Spurs are known for being at the forefront of international scouting, so they can filter past the hype of some international prospects and will at the same time find diamonds in the rough.

Obviously, the Spurs have been more successful in what has been termed a crapshoot, but the Nuggets decided to mostly cash out instead of playing the tables.

Player acquisition

As one of the "small-market" teams in the NBA, the Nuggets are not on the short-list for high profile free agent signings. Yet, the Nuggets continuously filled out its roster by signing mid-tier role players who were able to positively contribute.

Although the Nuggets have been in a place termed "no-man's land" between blowing it up to restart and dreaming of championships, the Nuggets have taken some smart risks to maintain competitiveness while attempting to become great (except 2013-14, when the Nuggets lost its Olympian and added nothing new of significance). All signs point to a similar process going forward.

The Nuggets still have been a destination for superstars, via trade – the Allen Iverson era, followed by the Billups era, followed by a year with the other Philadelphia AI, Andre Igoudala. In between, the Nuggets flipped a departing Carmelo Anthony for solid players, trade chips and other assets.

The Spurs famously acquired Kawhi Leonard in a draft-day trade while slowing filling other parts of its roster with unheralded role players and smaller trades.

So, despite being a small-market team, the Nuggets found a way to field a good team for many years and take risks with superstar players and other free agents.

Coaching – Pop is the greatest

George Karl often lamented that Gregg Popovich looked so good as a coach because he had so many high quality people on that team. If Popovich had knuckleheads like Karl had, Pop wouldn't have been so successful, Karl surmised.

Whereas Karl had Iverson, Melo, JR Smith and JaVale McGee, Pop had team-first, coachable, geeky players. The only major off-court distraction was Tony Parker's gossip-magazine relationship with Eva Longoria, which is now over.

This fifth Spurs title was definitive in showing that Popovich is a master tactician, that he does make players better, and that he can adjust well to different situations. San Antonio's early championships were about stingy defensive teams, while this one was one of the most beautiful and smooth offensive displays the league has ever seen.

Popovich has become untouchable, which means that even though Karl is accurate that Popovich never had a knucklehead on his team, his greatness can't be doubted.

(On a similar note, Phil Jackson's 11 rings makes him immune from doubt despite having some of the most talented players ever, including two of the most psychotic competitors in the history of the league.)

Coaching – George Karl was a great offensive mind

Their offense was one of controlled chaos. There were no set plays, and there was lots of passing. If they could run the break, they did. There was no single player that could be stopped, as everyone was used as a weapon. They had a deep bench, and players were always ready to play.

That describes both the 2012-13 Nuggets and the 2014 champion Spurs.

During the 2014 Finals, the Spurs' game pace – the number of possessions per game – doesn't account for the speed with which the ball moved around the court. When the Spurs didn't get a shot off the break, they still set up early in the shot clock, then spent most of the 24 seconds with the ball moving from one side of the floor to the other, usually never stopping.

When the Nuggets passed the ball, they won. When they didn't, they lost.

The criticism that the Nuggets will never be able to win a title without a real offensive system was proved wrong by the Spurs. The Nuggets' failure against the Golden State Warriors in 2013 was not because the Nuggets didn't have an offensive "system" in place when they couldn't run the break; it was about three-pointers (the Nuggets could neither defend nor make any) and the absence of Gallinari.

Analytics and the three-point shot

In the late '90s, with Nick Van Exel running the show in Denver, he was criticised for bricking too many threes, as that shot was out of his range – if he had stepped closer a few feet inside the line and took a long two, he could score more.

Those days are gone – most analytics point to taking a plethora of three-pointers and shots from the paint, making long-twos a dead area, except for superstars who can shoot from anywhere.

The Nuggets knew about the effectiveness of shots in the restricted area. They often would outscore opponents in the paint, even when they had unselfish big men (i.e. Nene).

However, by packing the paint on defense, the Nuggets were near-bottom in threes allowed. On offense, the Nuggets haven't had many three-point threats.

George Karl was a modern NBA coach. He still often relied on tried-and-true experience, but he and his staff did use different technology and modern statistics to help inform some decisions.

The Spurs were using analytics before they became popular. They are more humble about it and less self-congratulatory about it that they never founded a sports statistics conference at MIT.

On the court: Nuggets vs. the Spurs

Since the Nuggets drafted Melo, they have always been able to play up to (and play down to) whatever competition they faced.

They went toe-to-toe with most of the top teams, winning more than they lost against them – but also playing poorly to bad teams. The Spurs were the only team the Nuggets were never competitive against, often defeating the Nuggets by 20 points or sweeping them in the playoffs.

The Spurs are consistent every game, putting in the same intensity. They demolish teams they are better than and play evenly against everybody else.

As Grantland's Zach Lowe pointed out over the summer, the Spurs play transition defense better than anybody else. The 20 points by which the Nuggets always would lose to the Spurs – the Spurs' transition defense probably accounted for at least 10 of them.

Player development and the future

The Nuggets don't have a direct D-League feeder program, and, because most players have come via trade or free agency, the Nuggets have most often put known talent on its roster rather than developing young and inexpensive talent.

The Spurs have been ahead of the curve in nearly everything, from scouting, to analytics, to player development. The Spurs have their own D-League feeder team, which is run in tandem with its NBA squad and has close ties to the city.

When all other NBA teams have a D-League affiliate, the Nuggets will get one as well. But the Nuggets not having one confirms that the Spurs are innovative trend-setters in multiple aspects and experiment with many different things, while the Nuggets are patient adaptors of ideas.

The Spurs are the epitome of class in the NBA, have been so for more than two decades and they will likely stay there for decades to come.

The Nuggets have been an average NBA team throughout its history,with periods of ineptitude and competitiveness. The Nuggets have never won a championship, just like most teams in the NBA.

The Spurs are way above average, and we can hope that the Nuggets continue to remain average or above average.