The Diss-cussants are here to collectively eat the giant Dagwood sandwich of the NBA season: the Finals. Well, all of them except the vegetarians in the group, who were supplied with veggie burgers and a couscous thing.
1. Who did you think was going to be in the NBA finals at the start of the season? What percentage correct were you?
Kevin Draper: Like everybody else, I was certain the Heat were going to make it out of the Eastern Conference. From the Western Conference I guess I thought the Thunder would do it, but I would’ve bet the field against any one team.
Hans Peterson: Well, if forced to pick I would have said the Heat and the Thunder. But I’m feeling pretty good that a couple times in my contributions this year that I was certain that no one other than the Heat, Thunder, or Spurs was going to win it all, despite all the young, trendy, rising teams. For a while I was nervous Memphis was going to make me look bad – so much for that. So technically 50% correct, but with a couple bonus points.
Alex Maki: I am probably on record somewhere, but I am pretty sure I thought the finals would be a rematch of the Heat and the Thunder, and that the Thunder would pull it out again. Lakers probably would have been my second pick from the West. Spurs might have been my third. However, I still believe that if Westbrook had stayed afloat then the Thunder would probably still be playing basketball.
Andrew Snyder: Celtics – Lakers Round 3! Just kidding, but I’ve heard they’re still both alive in the minds of minor NBA bloggers looking for unique angles, competing with the Bulls and Thunder in the 2013 Devastating Injury Conference Finals…I, like everybody else and their mother, was expecting a 2012 Finals rematch, with the Thunder putting up a better fight this time around. So, I’d say I was 34.72% correct, plus or minus 50%.
Kenji Spielman: I thought Heat, and… honestly I can’t remember. It was a strange year for the Western Conference. I wasn’t betting Lakers, I probably assumed it was going to be the Thunder again.
2. Is there any particular narrative that seems especially compelling in this matchup between the Spurs and Heat?
Kevin Draper: Most fascinating to me is the coaching matchup. Gregg Popovich is fairly well-acknowledged as the best coach in the game today, with various claimants vying for second: Doc Rivers, Rick Carslisle, Tom Thibodeau etc. But what about Erik Spoelstra? Spoelstra is already one of only four active coaches to have won a ‘ship, and with a win this year he’s only the second coach with multiple. Coule Spoelstra mount an assault on the “Best Coach in the NBA” title?
Hans Peterson: Not so much, really. I think Lebron vs. just about anyone is compelling, as he is the player I am most excited about watching since Jordan. I just really get the feeling pretty much anything could happen in a game he plays. It will be fun to see if Duncan can maintain his perfect Finals record. It will NEVER happen, as Duncan is probably the only top 10 current player that Lebron can’t guard now that Dwight sucks, but I would love to see Duncan go off for two games, take a two game lead, and then have the Heat throw Lebron at him in desperation. It wouldn’t work, but that would be about the craziest versatility move since Magic started at Center.
Alex Maki: Well, as the playoffs have gone on here I think it is fair to say that Lebron looks to be carrying the Heat in a comparable way (though less dramatic most times) as to when carried the Cavs. So if you buy that logic, the whole team vs. the best player in the league narrative makes sense. But I think the other narrative is whether or not Lebron will ever be part of a team that is as consistently impressive as the Spurs have been over the past 14 years or so. If he wins this one, maybe we can start to believe. Otherwise, I put some stock in the notion that this Heat team can really only last another year or so as a top contender.
Andrew Snyder: Why is nobody talking about how destructive a force Tony Parker has been in the 2013 playoffs? A Spurs series win and a Finals MVP performance by Parker is the narrative I want to see, but the narrative I predict is the all around greatness of LeBron on display as he wills the Heat to back to back rings without too much trouble.
Kenji Spielman: The narrative that I fear will be out there is the individual brilliance of James vs the structured brilliance of the Spurs. Yet the Heat play very interesting team defense and the Spurs have the extraordinarily dynamic Tony Parker and the potential for Manu to freak the fuck out like old times.
3. What is your general feeling around this Finals series? Excitement? Annoyance? Ambivalence?
Kevin Draper: Great excitement. Absent Heat v. Thunder round two, I think this is just about the most compelling matchup possible. Once (if) people ever get over the whole “the San Antonio Spurs play a boring team game” they’ll see that they’re actually quite exciting to watch, and the other team has LeBron James. That’s drama.
Hans Peterson: Generally excitement. What I like about this matchup is that every single Finals I’m almost totally sure I know who will win, even when I turn out to be wrong (Dallas in 2011). But I really don’t know this time. I could absolutely see it going either way and feel significant ambivalence about any prediction. That’s fun. Also, as I said, I think I would enjoy watching Lebron play against pretty much anyone at this point.
Alex Maki: I am excited, actually. I like the Spurs in general, and I appreciate their brand of basketball. And it is always fun to cheer against the Heat. I think it is an intriguing matchup, and one of the best I could have hoped for. So only positive feelings from me on this one.
Andrew Snyder: Nirvana. This was the only realistic Finals matchup I wanted to see after Westbrook went down, and the contrast of styles yet systematic similarities (corner 3′s!) between the Spurs and Heat’s offenses should be a joy to watch. Oh, and did you guys know a pilot called Sidney Crosby a baby and the BOSTON BRUINS ARE GONNA WIN THE STANLEY CUP?
Kenji Spielman: This is actually the series I’ve wanted to see since the end of last year. I honestly still believe that it was a bit of a fluke that the Thunder beat the Spurs and was not that surprised at how handily the Heat beat the Thunder. So this year give me a sense of what we missed last year.
4. Do you think you’ll ever see your team in the NBA finals?
Kevin Draper: I…I do. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought of that before because the answer was so clearly no. But the Golden State Warriors seemingly have the two most important ingredients to winning a championship: an extremely savvy front office and a Top 5 player. Maybe the front office will blow it or maybe Stephen Curry really isn’t all that and a bag of potato chips, but I wouldn’t rule it out.
Hans Peterson: The Timberwolves? Maybe if they get sold to Vegas or something. I doubt it. I’ve said this before, but the NBA is not a parity league. If you are a small market team, you almost HAVE to luck into a top five player in the league through the draft to make it to the finals. Looking back through the last decade plus of finals match-ups, there are literally one or two teams that did not have one of the League’s top 5ish players when they made a finals appearance: Maybe the 2008 Celtics (3 top 20 players makes up for it, and it was done all through free agency – not an option for Minnesota), 2004 Pistons (probably the ONLY comparable exception – pretty bad odds to repeat that). Beyond that, you have to go back to the 90s and the era of unprecedented disparity between the conferences that let some terrible Eastern Conference teams sneak into the finals. So the Timberwolves will basically need to draft the equivalent of a Lebron, Durant, Paul, etc. to give themselves a limited window at a finals. Could be a awhile.
Alex Maki: No.
Andrew Snyder: The Celtics have a long road ahead of them to get back to an NBA Finals, and it almost certainly wont happen during the LeBron James Miami Heat era. However, if Danny Ainge can flip KG and Pierce for young, sustainable assets to add to the Rondo/Bradley/Jeff Green/Sullinger core, we could have an Indiana Pacers’ like situation on our hands in a few years.
Kenji Spielman: The Blazers? I plan on living a long ass time, so yes. But I don’t expect to see them there any time soon. If they had Phoenix’s training staff and had managed to keep Roy and Oden healthy, then we’d be having a very different discussion. But they did not, they had the anti Phoenix staff, the ones using Jackalope antler spray and enriched ecto-plasm that comes in a capri sun pack and has Slimer on the front.
5. Your prediction, please.
Kevin Draper: Heat in 5. LeBron James isn’t fucking around, and Chris Bosh is going to be a nightmare for either Tim Duncan or Tiago Splitter to guard. The Spurs are one of the worst teams in the league at offensive rebounding—one of the few areas where you can really attack the Heat like the Pacers did—and Golden State showed how a bevvy of shooters can kill them.
Hans Peterson: See answer 3. This is tough. Lebron will be the best player in every game of the series (Duncan might steal that title for one game with a vintage 25-17-7-4 or something, but generally Lebron will be the top dog). So to me the question is who has the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th best players on the floor. If its the Spurs for any four games, they will win. If either Wade or Bosh can outperform Ginoboli, Parker, and Leonard, et al. four of the games, the Heat win. The Heat are better on paper, but here’s what trips me up: I was sure that the Heat would win game 7 against the Pacers because the Pacers offense seemed fragile to me in a tight game, and I believed that when the chips were down, Lebron would take one piece out of the game entirely for Indiana. He did. The Heat won quite easily. I don’t know how well that works against the Spurs. No one is irreplaceable in terms of production (other than Duncan, who Lebron can’t guard even though it would be super awesome if he tried). So if Wade and Allen are broken down, I think the Spurs win and Lebron takes the title of best Finals performance in a losing effort. If forced to guess, I say that happens.
Alex Maki: Spurs in 6.
Andrew Snyder: Heat in 7.
Kenji Spielman: Spurs in 6.
6. Anything to add, Long?
Long Bui: I don’t have much more to add besides this.