#1 - 2013 NBA Finals Game 6 - San Antonio Spurs (H)

#1 - 2013 NBA Finals Game 6 - San Antonio Spurs (H)

San Antonio Spurs 100, Miami Heat 103

A lot has been written about this game. It’s got the recognition it deserves. It was probably the best game of basketball many of us will ever see. For Heat fans, it definitely was. For a neutral, it was two teams playing basketball at the highest level, with a whole host of incredible events occurring. A team lost a championship after being 28 seconds and 99% odds away from winning it. Ray Allen hit the best shot of all time. About a million other ridiculous things happened before and after. For Heat fans, the nerves made a lot of it too hard to fully enjoy. I find my personal feelings and memories about the game more difficult to recall than game 6 in Boston. The game was so surreal it felt like a bit of a whirlwind. I remember feeling absolutely depressed when the Heats trailed and looked discombobulated in the 3^rd quarter. I remember not knowing quite what was happening when LeBron started leading them back, sans headband. I remember Ray Allen’s 3 being the most excited I’ve ever been watching sports. I remember Kawhi Leonard taking away all the euphoria in an instant in overtime, replacing it with intense dread. I remember not really knowing what to feel when it was all said and done. I was ecstatic, drained, shaken. All I had done was sit on a couch for a few hours.

I think the quality of the game can best be laid out by going through just how many crazy things actually happened in that game, many of which are forogtten. It might have been the best game of all time even without the Ray Allen shot.

•     For starters, the Heat were one game away from losing the finals. Despite being reigning champions, it felt like this game still meant everything for the legacy of the big 3 experiment.
•     The quality of the basketball, as always in this series, was incredible
•      The atmosphere in the building was weird. You could feel the nerves, the desperation for things to go well, the hesitation to cheer too much, too soon, the intense fear about the Spurs, the ever lingering possibility that you were watching your team lose the championship in front of you, on home court. They gave ever play this gripping intensity watching it. Every heat jumpshot feeling like it carried the weight of the world.
•       As the spurs looked like they were pulling away in the 3^rd, that feeling intensified. Then things started to get really weird.
•      Duncan somehow turned back the clock and went for 25 (TWENTY - FIVE!!) in the first half. This was meant to be the Tim Duncan game.
•       Leonard playing like a superstar well beyond his years
•       Wade and Leonard trading huge facial slams in the 1^st quarter.
•       Leonard’s jam on miller deserves its own, separate mention. 
•        Leonard stealing the ball of james and getting the and one in the 3^rd, the edginess of the crowd seeping through the tv
•      Duncan getting an and one to push the lead to 13, and the Heat fans starting to lose hope, not for the first time in the game
•      LeBron starting to rally the heat in the 4^th, with a really weird, not quite in control game. The pressure of the occasion was clearly getting to him, but it was mixed in with his incredible talent and drive to win. He would drive by defenders with ferocious power, but then get to the rim with so much nervous energy he would almost bobble the simple layup. Still, for a period to start the 4^th he was huge.
•       Miller hitting a big big 3  … SANS SHOE (Just a lovely little detail to be forgotten that sums up how crazy this game was)
•       In the middle of LeBron’s run, he connected on a dunk and his headband was knocked off. It feels silly typing it, but the fact he elected to play on without it felt anything but insignificant. It was like the LeBron face in game 6 in Boston. It was the little token that signified what this game represented - LeBron not having the power to guarantee victory, but only to leave everything out there on the court. It looked like he would fail. And without his headband, the game felt extremely weird. It heightened everyone’s awareness to the fact that they were watching something different. Something you couldn’t turn your eyes away from for a second.
•       LeBron’s block on Duncan, then hitting a banker over him at the other end. The crowd breaking into seven nation army, wildly cheering on the headbandless LeBron. It looked like they would do it.
•        For LeBron’s late game heroics, will seemed to be the bigger factor than composure.
•         Surely the crowd would will them home? Allen hits a reverse layup. But the kid Leonard comes down the other end and continues to score and keep the spurs in it.
•        In the forgotten aspect of the game, the heat had the lead by 3 with only 1.30 to go. They had successfully wrestled back the ascendancy. It was the spurs who would have to come up with the plays to claim their victory before the Heat famously did. And it was Parker’s crushing 3 over the outstretched hands of LeBron which brough all of the Heat’s momentum crushing to a halt.
•      Seemingly stunned by the rapid change in the outlook of the game, LeBron staggered and hopped and threw up a hopeless pass that was stolen, and then a hapless shot next possession, as Parker spun his way into the lane and hit the jumper over Chalmers. Everything had fallen apart so suddenly for the Heat. LeBron had been made to look totally lost. LeBron’s heroics up to that point looked to be erased by the images of him hopeless failing to keep the Heat in it late.
•       The spurs led by 5 with 28 seconds to. Missed free throws from Leonard and Ginobili gave the Heat life.
•        Fittingly, given the wild swings and up and down nature of the game and the individual performances, LeBron would throw up an ugly brick off the backboard, only for it to be rescued by a Dwyane Wade tip to Mike Miller, who threw it back to LeBron. Perhaps aided by the hectic nature of the sequence and lack of time to think, LeBron connected on the most difficult to appreciate great play he would ever make. On the final Heat play of regulation, LeBron would again miss badly on a three, only for Bosh to grab the crucial rebound in a sea of traffic, unload it to a backtracking Ray Allen, and watch him rise, feet perfectly planted between the 3 point lines and the yellow rope which signified the Spurs incoming championship victory, and splash in the shot which would be replayed a million times. LeBron would defend Parker admirably on the final play, and ensure the game was going to OT.
•        Leonard would hit on two hooks and take the crowd from the most intense of ecstasies to the bitterest of despairs in an instant. Nobody quite remembers what happened in that Overtime for the Heat to win it, but I can tell you that apparently Bosh hit an and one, Allen connected on a layup and LeBron hit a fader in the lane off a Wade drive and dish to score the final points of the game with 1 minute and 44 seconds to go.
•      The heat would make a number of big defensive plays to seal it. A bosh block. A LeBron steal. And then another block by Bosh to seal it.
•      The finale to the game was a fitting reflection of the craziness of the whole affair. LeBron and Miller playing without headbands and shoes. LeBron connecting on huge, clutch shots, but then losing the ball out of bounds on fast break layups. It was never quite one team rising to the occasion, never quite one team choking from it. When Leonard missed that crucial free throw, he would come right out in overtime and grab his team the lead. Both of the Heat’s big three point shots would come off offensive rebounds made easier by how terrible the preceding shot had been. The final points would come with 1 minute and 44 to play, followed by possession after possession of both teams failing to get that crucial next bucket. That Bosh would throw himself into Green on the final play after all they had gone through to hold onto that slim lead, making contact with the ball and Green, banking on the fact the ref could never call it. He didn’t. And the ref called an end to something we didn’t quite know how to make sense of. We just knew we wanted to tell people about it. 

In all the mess, one image stood clear. Ray Allen, the former Celtic, rising in front of a sea of waving white towels. A flick of the wrist to decide the legacy for his adopted Miami Heatles, with the eyes of the world fixed on him, mouths agape, without time to formulate a thought. The image to capture the four year’s wouldn’t even feature the big 3, because … why not. Nothing about the run was ever conventional, straight forward or predictable. It was gloriously not so. A zig for every zag. LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, Erik Spoelstra, Pat Riley, Tim Duncan, Greg Popovich, the many celebrities positioned courtside behind Ray, LeBron’s mum herself, all turned to helpless spectators, for a moment. It was as it had always been for the Heat: something to watch, captivated, fully immersed, unable to train your gaze away from. Just like in that moment, they captured the world’s interest. Not always support, not always detest, but never neither. For a moment. For a game. And for four years. And in both cases, it would be unforgettable.