The San Antonio Spurs won their fifth NBA Championship earlier this evening, stunning the Miami Heat in five games. While most of the talk will be centered on the failure of Lebron James and his cohorts Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, the real story is about the amazing team the Spurs were, and how dominant they played in the series against the Heat.
This years NBA finals was a rematch of the Spurs and Heat teams that faced each other last season battling for the championship. While last years NBA Finals was a close and hard fought battle, in which the Heat narrowly escaped with the title. The rematch was significantly different as the Spurs outscored the heat by a record shattering 70 points (528-458). In fact, had the Spurs not missed four free throws late in game 2, this series easily could have been a four game sweep by the Spurs.
The Spurs played team basketball throughout the series averaging about 4 passes per possession and consistently making the extra pass to either get an open look for a shooter or a lay up opportunity. This constant ball movement was in contrast to how the Heat and many of the NBA teams play today, as they are constantly dribbling or looking for one-on-one isolation opportunities, which quite frankly, leads to boring basketball in my opinion. The Spurs on the other hand, looked like a well-oiled machine as they were constantly shifting the ball from one side of the court to the other in and out, like a perfectly choreographed dance recital.
The triumvirate of James, Wade, & Bosh (also known as Miami’s “Big Three”) were unable to live up to the self proclaimed hype they unleashed on the NBA four years ago, when they announced in their opening press conference/rock concert how they were going to win “not one, two, three, six, but seven Championships”. Well, the results are in, and after four seasons, they have made four NBA finals appearances, but have only won two championships. While most teams would be thrilled with four straight finals appearances and two Championships, those results are definitely not what was expected of the Heat when James and Bosh signed in the summer of 2010. Most of that is their own fault for setting such unrealistic expectations before ever playing together as a team, and I use the word “team” in the Heats case more tongue in cheek, as they go as Lebron goes in most cases.
Meanwhile, the Spurs are the anti-Heat, they were led by Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard who didn’t even have any offensive plays called for him. They have one lottery pick on their team (Tim Duncan), no big money free agents, and the rest of the players are late round draft picks or players cut from other teams. Their roster includes eight players born outside of the United States including Tony Parker and Manu Ginobi (the other two members of the Spurs non-proclaimed “big three”) and they have a no-nonsense coach in Gregg Popovich who would just assume pour gasoline on himself and light the match, as he would speak to the media (or so it seems). The Spurs are not interested in their “brand” or individual awards, they just want to go out and play basketball the way it was meant to be played and win games.
Parker, Duncan, & Ginobli are the winningest trio in playoff history
The most remarkable thing I think you can say about the Spurs is that while the Lakers “Showtime” dynasty will get all the hype, the Spurs trio consisting of Tim Duncan, Parker, and Ginobli have now won more playoff games than the Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabar, and James Worthy led Lakers group did during their championship runs. Does this mean the Spurs are the new Showtime? No, it just means they are a great basketball team that is vastly under appreciated and deserves all the accolades they receive and more!