This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/sports/basketball/for-heat-and-spurs-a-fitting-end-to-a-wild-finals.html

The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Wild Heat-Spurs Battle Comes to Fitting Finish Delivering Another Memorable Game 7
(about 2 hours later)
MIAMI — Before the last N.B.A. finals of his 30-year tenure, Commissioner David Stern proclaimed that the matchup between Miami and San Antonio was probably the most eagerly awaited championship clash he had presided over. MIAMI — On the eve of the N.B.A. finals, the last of his 30-year tenure as commissioner, David Stern went full-bore Barnum, proclaiming the matchup between Miami and San Antonio as probably the most eagerly awaited championship clash he had presided over.
Stern may have been exaggerating, but the battle between the Heat and the Spurs was compelling. It came down to Thursday night’s Game 7, the 18th N.B.A. finals to go the maximum length. In all likelihood, Stern was happily exaggerating — after all, he was commissioner when Larry Bird and the Celtics took on Magic Johnson and the Lakers in the finals — but as the battle between the Heat and the Spurs went back and forth into Game 7 on Thursday night, with neither team able to win two games in a row, with future Hall of Famers on both sides soaring and straining and defending with a crazed determination, it was increasingly apparent that Stern had been right on the mark with his statement, or pretty close to it.
“They’re the best two words in sports: Game 7,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said after his team’s 103-100 overtime victory in Game 6 on Tuesday. “There’s nothing bigger than a Game 7.” The 18th seven-game finals in N.B.A. history, and the sixth on Stern’s watch, was indeed something to behold, right down to the final moments on Thursday night, with both defenses swarming on possession after possession, with every shot contested, with the Heat finally prevailing, 95-88.
History suggested that the Heat, the home team for Thursday’s game, would have a significant edge. In the previous 17 Game 7s, the home team had a 14-3 record, including victories in the last five matchups. The Washington Bullets, in 1978, were the last visiting team to win a Game 7 in the finals. They beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 105-99, behind 19 points each from Bob Dandridge and Charles Johnson. This intense series began with the Spurs stealing the Heat’s home-court advantage with a narrow 4-point victory in Game 1, and then veered into surprising, attack-counterattack outcomes in Games 2 through 5 in which the victory margin was never smaller than 10 points. That was followed by a Game 6 that needed five minutes of overtime to be resolved.
This year’s finals had some symmetries. The Spurs and the Heat blew out each other, won on each other’s court and each won a game decided in the final minutes. Before Thursday, neither team had won consecutive games. If that trend continued, it would mean a Spurs victory in Game 7. It would also be the sixth time that a finals had two teams alternating victories from start to finish. All of which created a drum roll for Game 7, the first since 2010, when the Lakers barely held off the Celtics in Los Angeles. The Spurs’ carved-in-granite threesome of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili had been down this tense road before, having prevailed in a Game 7 of the finals at home in 2005, turning back Larry Brown’s Detroit Pistons by a score of 81-74.
The last time that happened was in 1974, when the Boston Celtics, the road team in Game 7, beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 102-87. As Thursday’s game approached, those Celtics were also the only team to lose Game 6 in overtime and win the title. The Heat’s manufactured threesome of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were in their third finals together but in their first Game 7, their loss in the 2011 finals to Dallas coming in six games, their 2012 triumph over Oklahoma City needing just five.
The Heat were trying to overcome odds, too. Since the finals went to a 2-3-2 format in 1985, only three teams had won Games 6 and 7 at home after trailing by three games to two: the 1988 Los Angeles Lakers, the 1994 Houston Rockets and the 2010 Lakers. Under the old format, the Knicks won one of the more memorable Game 7s when they beat the Lakers at Madison Square Garden in the game always remembered for the way the injured Willis Reed limped onto the court before the game and made two baskets in the early minutes. More significant than previous experience, though, was the fact that the Heat were playing at home. In the previous 17 Game 7s, the home team had a 14-3 record, including victories in the last five matchups. But the energy, even the confidence, that a home crowd can give a team was not in evidence when Game 7 started. Both teams missed their first shot, each team had passes stolen. It was Parker who scored the first basket, not James, the Spurs who jumped to the early lead, not the Heat.
Heat guard Ray Allen was the only player in this series to play in the last Game 7 of the finals, in 2010. As a member of the Celtics that year, he experienced the difficulty of playing the deciding game on the road. The Celtics built a 13-point lead in the second half, but Kobe Bryant, who struggled through the first three quarters, rallied the Lakers in the final 12 minutes for an 83-79 win. By the second quarter, though, the Heat had found some momentum, and the crowd had found its voice. And in the fourth quarter, the crowd roared again, as Miami finally pulled away.
Despite losing, Allen said playing in that game was an incredible experience. When it was over, when the Heat were triumphant, and the downcast Spurs were staring at a Game 6 that had slipped away in the final seconds and, now, the possible breakup of the threesome that had won three rings together, it was worth remembering that the last visiting team to win a Game 7 in the finals was the Washington Bullets, way back in 1978, when they beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 105-99, behind 19 points each from Bob Dandridge and Charles Johnson.
“You felt there was just a thickness in the air where everything seemed like it was against you,” Allen said of being the road team that night. “We even had the lead coming into the fourth quarter, and we just ran out of gas.” Bill Woten, the author of “Game 7: Inside the N.B.A.’s Ultimate Showdown,” has said the best finals that went seven games were in 1984 and 1988. In 1984, Larry Bird’s Celtics defeated Magic Johnson’s Lakers, 111-102. The 1988 finals concluded with Johnson and the Lakers beating Isiah Thomas and the Detroit Pistons, 108-105. And that the only other team to ever win a championship Game 7 on the road was the gold-standard Boston Celtics, who behind Dave Cowens and John Havlicek and Paul Silas and Don Nelson and Don Chaney (all those future coaches) trounced the Milwaukee Bucks of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 102-87, on May 12, 1974, and who behind Havlicek and Bill Russell and Sam Jones (and yes, Nelson, too), beat the Lakers’ mighty threesome of Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, 108-106, on May 5, 1969.
After Tuesday’s Game 6, Tony Parker kept some perspective even though San Antonio had just endured its most devastating loss of the season. In the 2005 finals, Parker helped the Spurs recover from a Game 6 loss to beat the Pistons in Game 7. It is simply not easy to prevail over another great team, and their 20,000 screaming fans, in an all-or-nothing Game 7.
“We have to realize we have another great opportunity,” Parker said. Just ask Ray Allen, who had saved Game 6 for the Heat with his final-seconds 3-pointer, and who was the only player on either team on Thursday night who had been in that last Game 7 of the finals, the one in 2010 in Los Angeles.
As a member of the Celtics that year, he lived the difficulty of playing the deciding game on the road and said he could still taste it. The Celtics built a 13-point lead in the second half of that game, but Kobe Bryant, who had struggled for three quarters, rallied the Lakers to victory in the final 12 minutes.
“You felt there was just a thickness in the air where everything seemed like it was against you,” Allen said of being the road team that night. “We even had the lead coming into the fourth quarter, and we just ran out of gas.”
He added, “When you play in front of your home building, it gives you so much momentum.” As it did. Ultimately, last night.
Bill Woten, the author of “Game 7: Inside the N.B.A.’s Ultimate Showdown,” has stated the best finals that went seven games were in 1984, when Bird’s Celtics beat Johnson’s Lakers, and in 1988, when Johnson’s Lakers beating Isiah Thomas and the Pistons.
Reached on the phone before Game 7, Wooten said this year’s finals now matched those, particularly after the drama of Game 6 when the Spurs had a 5-point lead with 28.2 seconds to go in the fourth quarter and could not hold on.
“We have a great story no matter who wins,” he proclaimed, a little Stern-like.
As for Stern, he was at courtside, basking in his pre-finals hype. Two great teams had taken their battle to Game 7, and then played their minds out. What more needed to be said?