Before perhaps the most iconic shot in NBA history splashed through the mesh, the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs spent much of the 2013 NBA Finals engaged in a series of bludgeonings.
Fans remember Ray Allen’s game-tying 3 in Game 6 of the finals, the shot he made after backtracking to the arc as teammate Chris Bosh grabbed an offensive rebound. The Heat went on to win the game in overtime, and then took Game 7, with LeBron James passing Gregg Popovich’s final test: Would he take and make the 18-footers the Spurs were willing to concede? Before those games, though? The Spurs and Heat had followed up Game 1, decided by four points, with four games with double-digit margins. The average margin of victory for Games 2 through 5 was 20.25 points.
Still, that was a legendary series, made even better in retrospect because the Spurs got their revenge the next year. Here we are — here the Spurs are, again — with another delightfully inscrutable series, one with a decent chance of repeating not only next year but in several to come. The Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder will play Game 7 on Saturday night, with the winner advancing to the NBA Finals against the New York Knicks.
Aside from Game 1, when Victor Wembanyama put up a 41-point, 24-rebound, world-devouring performance in an overtime win, there hasn’t been a classic game. Yet, this should be remembered as a classic series.
It would be an overstatement to call this inevitable. Any series that features an overtime game and goes the distance could have flipped on a moment, obviously. But it is what this series deserves, even if the average margin of victory since Game 1 has been 17 points. This is what great teams do to each other, and even do to the biggest stars: They push them to their breaking points and beyond, forcing the opposition to go back to the lab to find counters. Sometimes they can, and sometimes they fail. Each game, another variable looms. But on the whole, the strengths and weaknesses exist in near-perfect balance, creating a stalemate.
How can Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander dominate in some moments and look discombobulated in others? Once you get past the trove of fans, online and elsewhere, that will point at the referees, you will see just how much defensive length and speed the Spurs can throw at him on the perimeter, and how much of the offensive load he is carrying with Ajay Mitchell out of the lineup and Jalen Williams limited by a hamstring injury.
He is forced to take shots just outside his comfort zone, and having to pull up from two feet further than usual with a hand in your face can make all the difference in the world, with Wembanyama’s presence in the middle limiting his options. The two-time defending MVP is averaging 24.3 points on just 37.9 percent shooting. That Gilgeous-Alexander has dished out 2.79 assists for every turnover is actually a testament to his patience and decision-making.
But shouldn’t Wembanyama, the closest thing the NBA now has to an inevitability, be able to rise above it all? At times he has, but Oklahoma City was not accidentally a historically great defensive team over the last two years.
The conversation about which Thunder player should guard Wembanyama after his brilliant Game 1 missed the point. The Thunder can throw all sorts of plus-defenders with different body types — the big and tough Isaiah Hartenstein, the wiry-strong Alex Caruso, the stout Luguentz Dort — at him while having some of the most attuned help defenders to complement them. We haven’t seen a player with Wembanyama’s blend of skills and size before, but anytime anyone that big dribbles, there is a chance to create defensive chaos. Add in that De’Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper are not at full health, and offensive disasters become possible.
The NBA, more than any other major North American sports league, is about superstars, so it is tempting to view the series through the prism of SGA and Wemby. There is some validity to that.
But the team defenses — San Antonio’s built around the one-of-a-kind Wembanyama, Oklahoma City’s the product of all-around relentless — are the true forces here. The Thunder have failed to score at the rate that the league’s worst offensive team, the Brooklyn Nets, did this season in all three of their losses, while the Spurs have failed to reach that mark twice. (They won both times.)
On any given night, one of those defenses can steal the show. Same with Wembanyama and Gilgeous-Alexander. Both teams are good, not great, from 3. Over the course of two weeks, all of those factors combine to all but guarantee a race that gets decided by a nose. It is that evenness that could, health- and cap management-willing, produce one of the best rivalries the league has ever seen.
There is another series that this one has echoed. Wembanyama has struggled at points against the Thunder, but the Spurs have won the 222 minutes he has been on the floor by 55 points. The Thunder have taken the 76 minutes he has sat by 37 points.
Even though the Toronto Raptors and Philadelphia 76ers split the first six games of their 2019 second-round series, only two of those games were decided by 10 or fewer points. Through the first six games, the 76ers had won the 207 minutes that Joel Embiid, another center who had a previously unseen combination of size and skill, by 86 points. They had lost the 81 minutes he hadn’t played by 92 points.
Game 7 of that series finished with one of the only playoff shots that rivals Allen’s 3 in 2013. The Spurs and Thunder aren’t guaranteed to produce that kind of drama on Saturday. However, the conditions are there for it.
We can dream.
