Wow, what a
Finals! Even as a Spurs fan I can
acknowledge this was an all-time great series featuring the league’s two best
teams pushing each other as far as they could.
These teams were dead even and I agree with Zach Lowe’s assessment that
these teams were basically co-champions.
They brought the best, and even sometimes the worst, out of one another
and I honestly believe that if these two teams played each other 100 times,
they likely both win 50. They were that
close, but guess what someone had to win and that someone happened to be the
Heat. The Heat won because they had a
great coach who built innovate offensive and defensive system predicated on
maximizing his unique team’s strengths.
The Heat won because even though they are a team of “superstars” they
had a great bunch of role players who understood their roles and maximized
their strengths. Most of all though they
won because of Lebron James. Lebron is
the best player in the world and played like it throughout the Finals; he had
one of the best game 7 performances ever, and was fantastic, even if the stat
sheet didn’t fully show it, throughout the series.
Let’s talk about
Lebron for a second; right now he is unquestionably the world’s best
player. He was last season and what did
he do? He worked tirelessly in the
offseason working on his post-game and to improve his jump shot, the latter
being the single most important factor in the Heat beating the Spurs. This is a player who can beat you so many
ways, he is almost impossible to stop driving the basketball, he is one of the
NBA’s best passers, he is now an elite jump shooter, o and when fully engaged
he is the best perimeter defender in the league. Let’s forget about trying to figure out
Lebron’s legacy, we can do that when his career is over, because right now he
is the league’s best player, it’s not close, and he is only getting better.
There are countless
other major stories to be talked about from both sides. Spoelstra secured his spot among the league’s
coaching elites for those who didn’t realize he was already there, going toe to
toe with Gregg Popovich and holding his own and even at points getting the
better of him. Dwyane Wade after
struggling for most of the post season, came through with some nice
performances in the Finals to help secure the team a championship. Hopefully the realization by America that
Chris Bosh is a defensive force and integral component of one of the league’s
best and complex defenses. Wow and the
role players seemingly all had their time to shine, whether it be Chris
“Birdman” Anderson, the “traitor” Ray Allen, amnesty candidate Mike Miller,
Mario “I’m getting yelled at” Chalmers, and the seemingly washed up Shane
Battier and Udonis Haslem. The Heat are
a team built around Lebron James but as his Cleveland days showed it takes a
supporting cast, and Miami’s was quite underrated, to win a championship. Their place in history will be complicated by
their struggles through the final two rounds of the post season, it will take
some time for me to figure out where they rank among the NBA’s last 10
champions, FYI it will be quite high, but this overall was a great team.
Now there were two
teams in the NBA Finals, and one that in almost any season would have been
crowned champion, the San Antonio Spurs.
This team that was so close to winning the championship in what many are
going to say was their last hurrah came up just a bit short. This team was a remarkable collection of
talent that was so well coached and so well put together it is truly a shame it
couldn’t win the championship. It had
the resurgent Tim Duncan putting together maybe his best season since winning
the Spurs won the championship in 2007 and played two epic games to try to
close out the series. Kawhi Leonard
looks like a superstar in the making, he likely could have won Finals MVP
averaging 14.6 PPG, 11.1 RPG and 2.0 SPG while covering Lebron most of the
series. Danny Green had his epic first 5
games of the Finals where he set the record for most 3 pointers hit in an NBA
Finals. The Spurs are going to be back
next season, there is no reason that they can’t be just as good if not better
than last season, especially considering how little they got from Manu all
season. They have star players, great
role players, a great coach and great management, I can’t think of a reason why
they can’t contend next season.
Again I just want to
appreciate how great a Finals we really saw between these two teams. It was a historic Finals that I’m probably
going to remember for the rest of my life and will be the Finals I judge all
others on. This was so much fun to
watch, I hope for it again next season.
Stay Hungry My Friends
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