Then it was done.

After three years, three NBA championships and all that came with them, it was done, the Lakers worn too thin in the middle, grown too old on the edges, the rest of the league having come too fast.

The San Antonio Spurs, the last team to have won the title before the Laker reign, eliminated the Lakers in the sixth game of the Western Conference semifinals on Thursday night, 110-82, at Staples Center.

With just more than two minutes remaining, the people stood and cheered in a 25-point deficit, and Laker Girls cried, and Laker players touched one another's hands. They thanked them for all of it, a three-peat that brought Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson together, from basketball worlds apart.