The re-invention of the NBA through the Western Conference Finals
It started on Sunday night. The series everyone more or less expected the NBA’s Western Conference to boil down to: the San Antonio Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
It pits one of the best franchises in the NBA’s recent history against the best young team in the league. It has marquee matchups: Russell Westbrook and Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and James Harden and, in a matchup of team icons, Tim Duncan and Kevin Durant. And Game 1 did not disappoint.
Storylines in sports are rarely so clearly written on the wall. This series could well be a changing of the guard in the NBA with a plot so blunt Dan Brown could’ve written it. The Thunder, led by the stellar play of Durant, soars past the Spurs into the Finals and play the Heat. It’s simple, perfect and ready-made for ESPN Classic. As a Spurs victory in Game 1 showed, that’s not going to happen.
Don’t make the mistake of sleeping on this Spurs team. Yes, Duncan is old, as at 3, he’s older than everyone on the Thunder, save Derek Fisher. They don’t have the same star power Oklahoma City does. Durant finished second in MVP voting, Parker a distant fifth and Duncan picked up one fourth-place vote. Yet they roared into the postseason with the top seed in the west with the best SRS in their conference and were tied with the Bulls for the best record in the NBA.
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Still, it’s more than that. It’s taken years, but the Spurs have emerged as one of the most enjoyable teams in the league. It wasn’t too long ago that the Spurs played a style of basketball usually called boring: Duncan backing into the post, a half spin, a bank shot that rattles in. Their most recent championship was a Finals sweep of the LeBron-led Cavs, where the Spurs scored around 80 points per game. They were a team easy to dislike and easy to hate, especially after bloodying Steve Nash.
Things have changed. San Antonio was the second-highest scoring team this season. The once reclusive Gregg Popovich has given interviews, shown a shrewd sense of humor (DNP – OLD) and, most memorably, given the Internet gems like this. More recently, Sports Illustrated profiled Duncan, telling stories of him swimming with Popovich or rigging a paintball tournament.
The man described in the first Free Darko book as “a monument to bottom lines, permanent but not necessarily memorable” has grown ever more human as he ages. His team has been a standout in a season marred by injuries, three-in-four nights and playoffs that have been, in a word, uninspiring.
But the Spurs have been outstanding in this postseason. They haven’t lost a single game and are leading all playoff teams in both points-per-game and field goal percentage, while maintaining a defensive rating of 97, second best among playoff teams.
They couldn’t have better, more compelling competition in this series. The Thunder lost only once, a three-point defeat at the hands of the Lakers, and swept Dallas, defending NBA champs. They’re a very talented young team: Durant was a bona-fide MVP candidate, James Harden the NBA’s best sixth man and Westbrook is one of the league’s best guards (and a snappy dresser to boot). In the past few years, they’ve slowly been improving. Two years ago, they lost a chippy first round series to the Lakers and last year they lost to Dallas in the conference finals.
While Durant is getting all the hype, Westbrook has also excelled this season. In 2012, he set career highs in scoring, shooting and Win Shares. His role on the Thunder has changed somewhat – his assist rate is down, for one – but the team is as good as it’s ever been in OKC; their 47-19 record is the best this team’s had since the late 1990s, back in the days of Vin Baker and Gary Payton.
The really interesting thing about this series is how compelling it should be, especially by comparison. Over in the East, things have been dull: Boston and Philadelphia struggled to score more than 85 points per game and Miami is steamrolling everything in their path: just witness the way they dismantled Indiana in the last three games of that series. It’s easy to dislike the Heat but it’s even easier to see them trample the aging, offensively-challenged Celtics.
Game 1 was a clinic in exciting basketball. A back-and-forth game where Durant picked up 27 and 10 with Stephen Jackson on him like a shadow and both sixth men playing outstanding: Harden, hitting five threes and Ginobili with 26 points, 11 of those in the fourth as the Spurs rallied from a nine-point deficit. It was not the most well played game (Westbrook was seven-of-21, for example) but it certainly lived up to the hype.
And that’s the best thing about this Thunder-Spurs series. Both of these teams are fun to watch and equally compelling: the Spurs for their past and to see if they’ve still got it, the Thunder to see if they’ve finally hit their potential. Not only is this the most anticipated series of these playoffs, it’s got a good shot at being the most exciting, too.
Game 1 was Sunday night. If necessary, Game 7 will be on June 8. Let’s hope it is.
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