San Antonio Spurs defeat Miami Heat to secure their fifth NBA title

Tim Duncan and the Spurs after beating the Miami Heat in five games to win the 2014 NBA Championship (Photos: Getty Image)

Story by Bloomberg
Written by Erik Matuszewski

The San Antonio Spurs ended the Miami Heat’s two-year reign as National Basketball Association champions by winning their fifth title in the past 16 seasons, and did it in record-setting fashion.

The Spurs became the first team in league history to win three straight NBA Finals games by more than 15 points, capping a four-games-to-one series win with last night’s 104-87 victory in San Antonio. They outscored the Heat by an average of 18 points in their four wins.

San Antonio avenged last season’s six-game loss to Miami in the championship series, the Spurs’ lone NBA Finals loss since 7-footer Tim Duncan joined the franchise as the No. 1 draft pick in 1997. With five titles, the 38-year-old Duncan joins Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers for the most among active players.

“We remember what happened last year and how it felt in that locker room,” Duncan said after scoring 14 points and grabbing eight rebounds last night. “We used it, built on it and got back here.It’s amazing.”

Kawhi Leonard had 22 points and 10 rebounds in Game 5 to lead the Spurs, who prevented the Heat from becoming the sixth team to win at least three straight titles and the first since Bryant’s Lakers in 2000 to 2002. San Antonio also won NBA championships in 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2007.

Leonard, 22, became the third-youngest player selected as Most Valuable Player of the NBA Finals behind Duncan (1999) and Magic Johnson (1980). The 14 years between Duncan’s first and most recent appearances in the NBA Finals is the second longest in league history. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had 17 seasons between his first trip to the NBA Finals and last at age 42 in 1989.

Emotional Duncan

As the Spurs and their hometown crowd celebrated, Duncan jumped into the arms of former San Antonio center David Robinson, who was a part of the franchise’s first two championship teams and won a title in his final season.

“It’s just the close of a career, I know it’s coming to an end,” a teary-eyed Duncan said when asked about letting his emotions show. “I don’t know if I’ll have a chance to do this again. It’s just a real emotional time.”

The Heat, with their season on the line, jumped out to a 22-6 first-quarter lead last night. The Spurs answered with a 12-0 scoring run and trailed 29-22 after the opening quarter.

San Antonio then outscored Miami 55-29 over the next two quarters, extending its advantage to as much as 22 points. Manu Ginobili scored 19 points, while Patty Mills scored 17 points off the bench for the Spurs and hit 5-of-8 3-pointers.

“What happened last year made us stronger and we weren’t going to let this opportunity get away,” said Ginobili, whose 117 postseason wins alongside Duncan and Tony Parker are the most in NBA history for any trio of players.

‘Better Team’

The Spurs shot 52.8 percent from the field in the Finals, the best for any team in the championship series since the 24-second shot clock was instituted during the 1954-55 season.

“They were the better team,” James said at a news conference. “That’s why they’re the champions.”

The only other playoff series Miami had lost since James joined the team as a free agent in 2010 was in that season’s NBA Finals to Dallas. James last night scored 31 points and pulled down 10 rebounds for the Heat.

“We went to four straight finals,” James said. “We’ll take 50 percent in championships any day. That’s the nature of the game.”

San Antonio had the best record in the NBA this season at 62-20 -- its record 15th straight year with at least 50 wins -- and then beat Dallas, Portland and Oklahoma City to reach the NBA Finals for the second year in a row.

Spurs’ Routs

The Spurs won the opening game of the series by 15 points before losing Game 2 at home, 98-96. The Spurs then romped to two straight victories in Miami by a combined 40 points, joining the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers as the only teams to win back-to-back NBA Finals games by at least 19 points.

Duncan and Spurs coach Gregg Popovich have 149 postseason wins together, 30 more than any other coach-player duo in NBA history. Popovich, in his 18th season in San Antonio, is the fifth coach with at least five NBA titles, joining Phil Jackson (11), Red Auerbach (9), John Kundla (5) and Pat Riley (5).

“There’s a lot of satisfaction to be able to come out on top of such a great organization and a great team,” Popovich said at a news conference. “They’re a class act and they’ll be back next year for sure. From our point of view, it’s satisfying because of the work we put in all year to get back to the finals and have this opportunity, and it worked out.”

This was the 12th NBA Finals rematch in history and the first since the Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz faced each other in the 1996-97 and 1997-98 seasons. Of the prior 11 rematches, there had been seven repeat winners.

The Spurs have a 23-11 record in the NBA Finals for a .677 winning percentage, second only to the Bulls, who had a 24-11 record and .686 winning percentage with Michael Jordan.

“We were so close last year and this year was a great rematch,” said Parker, who had 16 points last night and hit seven of his last eight shots. “We wanted to redeem ourselves. This title is for San Antonio and it’s the sweetest one.”

Story below by Spurs Nation Blog
Written by Dan McCarney

The Spurs started Game 5 of the Finals poorly at the AT&T Center, giving coach Gregg Popovich an unsettling flashback to one of the worst moments in franchise history. Much like their collapse in the 2012 Western Conference Finals, they were sluggish and stagnant, a far cry from consecutive beatdowns at Miami in which they elevated the game to artistic levels.

“I told my team we looked exactly like we did two years ago when we won the first two against OKC and then they won four in a row because we stopped moving the ball,” he said. “The ball didn’t move, it didn’t change sides. And that’s what the game looked like in the first six or seven minutes of the game.”

The Spurs trailed the Heat by 16 at that point, and visions of a return flight to Miami and squandered control were looming. But unlike last year, when fate conspired to steal the championship from their grasp, they simply would not be denied, crushing the Heat by 37 over the next two quarters and cruising to a 104-87 victory that capped their fifth championship and the most lopsided Finals triumph in NBA history.

The Spurs did lose a game in the series, winning 4-1. But their 14-point average margin of victory over those five games was a championship series record, as was their 52.8 team shooting percentage. That it came at the expense of the Heat, whose 4-3 victory in last year’s series continued to torment the Spurs well into this season, made it all the better. It said something about the depth of that heartbreak, and the achievement of getting back and earning redemption, that Tim Duncan said it was the most satisfying of his five championships dating back to 1999.

“It is sweeter than any other,” said Duncan, who became the first player to start for three different championship teams in three decades. “Whether it be because of the time frame, because I’m coming towards the end of my career, because I can have these two (his children) here and really remember it and enjoy the experience, all of those things make it that much more special.”

Having been beaten like no other team in the Finals, the Heat could only lavish praise on the team they devastated last year to win their second straight championship.

“We got smashed,” Chris Bosh said. “They exposed us. They picked us apart. They played the best basketball I’ve ever seen.”

Said LeBron James, “That’s how team basketball should be played. It’s selfless. Guys move, cut, pass. You get a shot, you take it, but it’s all for the team and it’s never about the individual. That’s (their) brand of basketball, and that’s how team basketball should be played.”

Even Manu Ginobili, so single-minded in his pursuit of another title that he said he couldn’t sit still to even read during the Finals, admitted getting caught up in the artistry of the Spurs’ play.

“There were some possessions on the court and seeing what was going on, some others on the bench, I was so proud,” he said. “Sometimes I felt like saying, ‘Wow, this is sweet.’ It was really fun to play like this.”

And, of course, to win and atone for last year’s defeat.

“To be so close last year, it was very cruel,” Tony Parker said. “But that’s the beauty of sport. Sometimes it’s tough. And sometimes it can be beautiful like today, because it shows a lot of character of the team to take a loss and to come back the following year and win the whole thing.

“It just makes the journey even more worth it. It was worth all the pain. It’s so sweet to win a championship the way we did. I would change nothing. It makes it even better, the fact that we had to go through that, to go through a tough loss, and to be able to come back.

“It just makes the journey even more worth it.”

Player of the game

Popovich wasted little time inserting bench captain Ginobili — less than three minutes, in fact. Yet the Spurs’ poor start got even worse, spiraling to a 22-6 deficit with five minutes left in the first quarter. That’s when Ginobili went to work, scoring six of his 19 points during a 12-0 surge that started the Spurs’ turnaround. Ginobili got into it with Miami counterpart Shane Battier to draw an offensive foul, then exchanged elbows with Chris Andersen on the ensuing timeout.



Rather than shrink, Ginobili lives for such confrontations. He later lifted off for a poster dunk in Bosh’s face as the Spurs padded their lead late in the first half, well on their way to victory. Ginobili averaged 14.4 points and shot 50 percent in the series, a huge performance after committing a total of 12 turnovers over the last two games of last year’s Finals.

“I’m not skilled enough to explain properly how we feel,” he said. “It was a tough summer. We all felt guilty. We all felt that we let teammates down. But we work hard. We got (back) to this spot, and we didn’t let go.”

The turning point

The game was barely seven minutes old, with anticipation of a championship celebration still thick in the air, when the Spurs found themselves on the wrong side of a 22-6 broadside. They responded in kind, destroying Miami’s lead and whatever was left of its collective psyche with an extended 59-22 surge spanning nearly two full quarters. The Spurs led by 21 at that point, and never fewer than 14 the rest of the way as they earned their fourth victory of at least 15 points in the series, and 12th in the entire postseason to extend their NBA record.

Here are a few numbers after the Spurs’ 104-87 victory to close out the series in five games.

1. The Spurs’ average margin of victory in the series was 14 points per game. It was the largest point differential in NBA Finals history. The previous record was 12.6 points per game by the 1965 Boston Celtics over the Lakers.
2. Kawhi Leonard scored 22 points and recorded 10 rebounds as he claimed the NBA Finals MVP. At 22 years and 351 days old, Leonard is the third-youngest recipient of that award since the NBA began awarding them in 1969.
3. Leonard also became the fifth-youngest player to notch at least 20 points and 10 rebounds in a series-clinching Finals game and the youngest to do that since Kobe Bryant in 2001, according to ESPN Stats and Information
4. The Spurs finished the series shooting .5276 percent from the field in the Finals. It was the highest shooting percentage for a Finals of any length. The Bulls shot .5272 in five games against the Lakers in 1991 and Detroit shot .5268 against the Lakers in 1989.
5. The Game 5 victory was the 12th time the Spurs have won by 15 or more points in the 2014 playoffs. The Lakers won 10 games by 15 or more points during the 1985 playoffs, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.