I’m not going to bore you with a recap or an analysis of why
the Spurs won. They obviously did because they were the better team and
deserved to win. I will admit a dash of disappointment – watching the Spurs
brand of basketball at its apex is exhilarating, couldn’t we have gotten a
couple more games? I’m not going to talk about what I got right (Spurs need for
another ball handler) and wrong (Heat shooters failing spectacularly). I wanted
to share some of the things that I learned watching this series.
The Spurs’ Offense –
If It Were Easy, Everyone Would Play Like This. The Spurs offense is so fun
to watch. The ball flies around, from
corner to corner, from one pick-and-roll into another, form dribble drives to
shooters and back to the rim. Last year, the Spurs started figuring out the
Heat defense, but Erik Spoelstra gamely made some lineup adjustments and Miami
cranked up the pressure in Games 6 and 7. There was nowhere to hide this year.
Guys rocketed of screens, made heady, quick decisions, and shot the ball with
confidence. One of my favorite plays of the Finals was an innocuous Patty Mills
leakout where, upon seeing no defenders back, Mills pulled up and canned a 3.
Some coaches deride this kind of play – you can shoot 3’s any time, why not
take it to the rim? But I enjoyed how decisive Mills was, how he was unafraid
to take a three in this moment, and that open threes are what the Spurs’
offense is designed to generate in the first place – why not take the first one
and push the pace?
So the Spurs have a great offense. Why don’t the other 29
teams take a page from it? There are other coaches that are capable of copying
these plays, right? (Scott Brooks excepted) My theory: it looks exhausting to
play the Spurs’ offense. Guys sprint from baseline to baseline, sometime as
decoys, sometimes receiving the ball. And they do that the whole game. The ball
has to be driven, shot, or passed within milliseconds – once it stops, the
whole thing collapses. You have to have superior ball handlers, shooters, and
passers, and guys that have the know-how and willingness to do those things
against an elite defense. You have to play 8-deep because Tony Parker is gassed
by the end of games if he has to run things alone. You need extraordinary
organizational buy-in because it takes immense dedication to excecute every
play right every time. The rest of the league don’t’ play like this because it’s
hard, because they don’t have a guy like Tim Duncan that will devote himself to
this system. Because they can’t find 10 guys who love each other and love the
game enough to do this.
Miami Looked Very, Very,
Old. This is why signing Carmelo Anthony is not going to help things. The
Heat already have an old roster. Another shooter who doesn’t do little things,
doesn’t have the energy or athleticism to keep up with 20-year-olds, is not
going to help them. Once Mario Chalmers self-destructed, the Heat lost the
final bit of youth in their starting lineup, and don’t even bring up the bench.
Why do I think they look old? Erik Spoelstra is one of the game’s better
offensive tacticians. He understands spacing, passing, screens, and angles with
the best of them. He draws fabulous out-of-timeout plays and has overseen a
complete overhaul of Miami’s offensive system. And yet, possession after
possession, the Heat would walk the ball up the court, dump it to LeBron, and watch
him wait out the shot clock before attacking in isolation (or with a
rudimentary high screen). It’s OKC basketball, so what is it doing in South
Beach?
I think Spoelstra has his guys purposefully playing this way
because he knows he doesn’t have guys that can sprint from side to side and make
quick, accurate decisions. That the Heat can’t run up and down the court with
the younger (!), more athletic Spurs. That his only chance is to limit
possessions, drain clock, and hope that the world’s best player can pull
something out of his butt to save them, over and over again. I think the Heat
play this way because Ray Allen can only run around so many screens, because
Dwyane never cuts anymore, because they have no other ball handler they trust. Because
they’re about 5-6 guys short from being able to run the Spurs’ system.
Kawhi Leonard Is a
Deserving Finals MVP. I’m not going to gloat that I was right about Kawhi
because it was no secret he was a star in the making. I’ll just say that I really
enjoyed his transformation. He guards everybody. He gets every rebound. He is a
deadly shooter, one you can run plays for. He has a handle and can take it to
the rack. Once, there, he will destroy them rim with a shattering dunk. He even
has a midrange, pull-up game. This was brought up in the broadcast multiple
times, but he really is like a younger Pippen, with those long arms and huge
hands. I already trust his shot more than Scottie’s. All he needs to develop is
a little more change-of-direction in his dribble drives and to keep working as
a passer. I’m so glad that he looks like the next star in the Spurs’ dynasty.
LeBron Had a Great
Series. People are going to criticize him for the cramps, the loss,
everything. But LeBron had a mammoth (though not epic) series. If not for those
cramps in Game 1, I really think the Heat win that game and we go back to Miami
for Game 6 on Thursday night. He was everything for Miami. He guarded the Spurs’
best players, whether Tony, Many, or Kawhi. He was the Heat offense. Sure, he
was played to a draw by Leonard, but without that ridiculous shooting display
in Game 2, this could have been a sweep. He scored a third of the Heat’s points
in this series on percentages better than he had in the regular season. LeBron
was not the reason the Heat lost. LeBron was the reason the Heat were here in
the first place.
On defense, James continued to try to glue the Heat’s system
together, but once it became evident that Mario Chalmers was unplayable, that
system folded. Putting LeBron on Parker works for stretches, but it also draws
him far from the rim, dissuades him from guarding two players as the Heat overload
the strong side, and invite the Spurs to use secondary ballhandlers, including
Leonard, Manu Ginobili, Boris Diaw, Danny Green, and Patty Mills to collapse
the defense. There’s a reason Spoelstra only resorted to this tactic during the
4th quarters last year. I’ll admit to supporting LeBron more than
some – to me, it’s a privilege to watch a transcendent player. He had a great
but not monumental series, and that is not at all indicative of his career. You
may not realize, but the NBA is better than it’s ever been (though not
necessarily the Eastern Conference). Teams and players are smarter and it’s
becoming harder to build a dynasty. That makes LeBron’s two titles special and
the Spurs’ most recent victory noteworthy.
Mike D’Antoni and 7
Seconds Or Less Worked. I believe Mike watched this series. Even though he’s
out of basketball out of being unceremoniously canned by the Lakers, D’Antoni’s
fingerprints were all over this series. In the mid-2000s, the NBA faced an
identity crisis. After the removal of the hand check rule and a cleaning-up of
officiating, the NBA had to decide if it would adhere to its physical, attack
the rim and the other team past, or if would look to a future of spacing,
threes, and penetrating guards. The 7 Seconds Or Less Suns that D’Antoni
coached were at the forefront of that evolution. They pioneered spacing, 3
pointers, and constant ball movement around a bevy of screens.
That movement was defeated. I remember someone writing that
the 2006 series in which Dwyane Wade and these Miami Heat defeated the Dallas
Mavericks as a referendum of sorts on the evolution. How the pack-the-paint, get-to-the-line,
old-school Heat mucked up the game and knocked out the hot-shooting,
floor-spacing Mavs. That series was followed by a half decade of traditional
teams winning the title: San Antonio, Boston Celtics, L.A. Lakers. Ironically,
it was the Mavs that ended the cycle somewhat by beating these Heat and their
Big 3, but even Dallas had to grab a rim-protecting big man (Tyson Chandler)
and a defensive wing (DeShawn Stevenson) to win it. Then 2012 happened. Chris
Bosh went down in the middle of the playoff run and the Heat unleashed
small-ball destruction on the league. Gone were the post behemoths. In was Battier,
a shooter, at 4. The next year they added another shooter and took down the
small-ball Spurs. This year, the cycle is complete.
What evidence do I have of this transformation? Boris Diaw.
Grantland just ran a great piece on him. He was a hallmark of the D’Antoni
Suns, a player that combined passing, shooting, and ball-handling into one
glorious package. After the evolution was suppressed, he bounced around more
traditional teams that had no idea how to use him. I remember him languishing
on the Charlotte bench, completely unplayable. Then he found the Spurs. Each
year, he’s gotten better as his hair has turned more silver. Last year, I couldn’t
believe my eyes when Boris, Charlotte Boris, was guarding LeBron and dishing to
Duncan. This year, he was a wrecking ball. His passes didn’t just lead to made
shots, they led to shots taken by wide open players. He punished people on the
block. He rained threes. Along with Kawih, he’s a Spur that is markedly
improved this year and a reason that this incarnation won the Finals.
I’m not saying that Mike D’Antoni is a great coach or
whatever. But he deserves credit for anticipating the way the league would be
played, even if it happened a few years too late for him. He deserves credit
for challenging convention and losing because convention is a sticky beast. I
hope Mike watched the Finals and I hope he was pleased by the product.
The San Antonio Fans
Deserve This. I don’t want to harp on Miami again, but if LeBron, Wade, or
Bosh are in the game, stay in your seat. Simple. Show them the respect to be
there because they won’t always be around. The Spurs fans? Magnificent. I’m not
one myself, but they deserve to savor this team a few more times. It’s truly
special team, a special city, and a special relationship. So relish this, San Antonio. I hope you're back next year.
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