no.
The only team that could have even a chance is the 05 team.
99 and 03 were too weak outside of the paint.
Miami had better opponents than the Shaq/Kobe Lakers?
no.
The only team that could have even a chance is the 05 team.
99 and 03 were too weak outside of the paint.
In the Finals, Absolutely. Better opponents than the Lakers and infinitely better than 3/4 Spurs opponents
The Spurs' defensive strategy last year was to force Miami to take jumpshots; the 99/03 teams would've done the same thing with greater success. The Heat would also have 0 answer for Duncan and unlike Splitter, DRob would've been able to post up a PG or Wade. The 03 team also had Stephen Jackson, Steve Kerr, and Bruce Bowen on the perimeter, which isn't bad at all.
Lakers and Spurs basically played the same level of compe ion in those Finals. The East was absolutely terrible back then.
Nah, I agree with Phillip. The 05 team was so dynamic in that it could play any style (fast or grind it out). In this day and age that is most important. If you see the teams that have win, it's because they can play any style.
Nope. I'd still put the Pistons above the Heat when it comes to all time ranks. Superfriends have benefited from a ty very watered down league and monkey balling rules that benefit them.
The '05 team would've had a good chance as well, but Duncan was on two bad ankles that postseason and the Heat would've had Lebron or Battier to throw on Manu.
True, Duncan had plantar fasciitis irrc. Still was ballin' tho.
I think ppl forget how great Manu was that year. He was arguably the second best SG in the league that year. I think his 13 Finals performance clouds that second part of your take imo.
No, Manu was a beast. It just goes to show how great of a defender both Lebron and Battier are.
They ain't winning this year so thread is pointless.
should have beat the mavs in 2011. They up.
And the Spurs were very fortunate that Miami (Lebron) hit a cold stretch for a few games. Oh, and then of course once Lebron got back in his groove and was hitting his jumper like he had been doing basically all season long, Miami came back and won the series.
99 and 03 teams had no players that would be able to consistently generate offense when dealing with the defense of Lebron/Wade/Battier. Last year, at least either Parker or Manu could create offense for themselves and others. Jackson, Kerr, and Bowen wouldn't be getting many good looks with the swarming defense Miami has. In order to get open shots on Miami, you need to have a guard who can penetrate. Case in point, 2011 series vs Dallas. Dallas outside shooters didn't do much until Dallas started utilizing Barea more and finding ways to help him penetrate. Once he did, the floodgates opened for Terry, Stevenson and Kidd.
99 and 03 Spurs don't have anyone who could really do that. Parker was too young and weak mentally in 03 to really exploit them, which is why Claxton (lol) had to bail him out against the freaking Nets.
All Miami would have to do is let Duncan go 1-on-1, get 40 a night, but shut everyone else down. And they have the defense to do just that to those teams.
Pistons ahead of Bulls, Lakers over Celtics, tbh...
LA
Boston
Spurs
Heat
Pistons
Even with Lebron going ape at the end of the series it took Battier hitting 7 3s in game 7 as well as Ray Allen and Chris Bosh making happen in 6 for the Heat to come back to win.
In that case it would've come down to defense, and the Spurs in both years were elite defensive teams arguably even better than Miami.
This is the best list I've seen.
Chicago had the run with MJ, but hasn't really done much else as a franchise. Always been streaky.
The Spurs have been consistently good pretty much through all their existence.
Another franchise that is not getting much credit (simply because they haven't been fortunate enough to bag a championship) is the Suns. They are another team that is consistently good for long stretches, and continues to rebuild effectively and find ways to produce some really good basketball teams. In the past 15 years, they have had 4-5 rebuilt cores (Kidd/Penny/Robinson to Marbury/Marion to Nash/Stoudemire, to Nash/Shaq/Marion, to Dragic/Bledsoe/Green), but still won lots of games, made the conference finals 3 times and only had 4 losing seasons. That's pretty amazing.
& it was the Spurs who opened the door & stepped out.
1) You know why Battier hit 7 threes? Because the Spurs defense was leaving him open, in hopes of containing Lebron.
2) It's nothing Battier hasn't done before. He plenty of times has come up clutch when his team needs him, including a big series in the finals the year before against OKC.
3) Again, the shots were WIDE OPEN shots. Nothing fluky. The Spurs just had a defensive strategy for that game that didn't work in their favor.
Don't make it seem like Miami had all kinds of lucky stuff happen for them to win that game 7. The Spurs had a strategy. Miami made them pay. That would be like a Miami fan saying that Danny Green had a fluky series, because of all the 3s he was hitting. No, he was getting insanely open on a lot of them because the Heat were too focused on sending extra help out for Parker's defender. Once they realized that Parker doesn't need to be doubled to be contained, Green didn't get many open looks, Parker struggled to create, and the Spurs offense suddenly didn't look so great. This right here IMO is the real reason this series even went to 7. If Miami would have just played TP straight up all series (which anyone with a brain knows that is how you play TP, doubling him is the worst thing you can do), there would have been far less of those 3s by Green and Neal, and Miami probably would have won sooner, perhaps in 5.
Either way, the Spurs flat out got beat. End of story. It wasn't a fluke. They simply didn't deserve it.
If you want to call Ray's 3 a fluke, then you could say the ridiculous step-back 3 that Parker had just hit a minute earlier was a fluke. In fact, it was actually more fluky, because Ray hit a shot he is arguably the greatest in NBA history at (a spot up 3), while Parker threw up a shot he almost never would take, and would probably miss 9 times out of 10. It was the epitome of a "hero" shot, that he somehow hit.
No, you're better than them. The Celtics 22 year drought in the modern NBA era shuts the door on them.
Jeez, I just read this and realized what a re ed sentence this was.
Sure, they were elite defensively, but offensively? Not so much. 13 Spurs offense was WORLDS better than the 99 and 03 offenses. Their offense is what kept them in the series and got them ahead.
But, that drought, like Duncan's sexuality is not spoken of. It's a gentlemen's agreement.
Great posts in this thread.
We've been the better team since Richard Nixon was president, true.
Still, 17 rings in 21 chances is incredible, even if most of them were obtained when there was 6 teams in the league
Btw, this makes a great trivia question: The Celtics are 17-4 in the NBA Finals, with 3 of those losses at the hands of the Lakers. Who was the only other team to beat them?
I had to look it up, tbh
Battier hitting those threes was an enormous fluke. He was missing wide open threes all playoffs long.
Never said he wasn't clutch, I've wanted him on the Spurs for years, but at that point in time with the way he had been playing up to that point, it was extremely unexpected (though I should've known better considering he's ed the Spurs out of nowhere in the past).
They were wide open for Battier, yes, and he finally started hitting them, but Chris Bosh and Ray Allen were the true heroes of game 6.
The Battier hitting shots he wasn't hitting in the past two months consistently was flukey, but other than that it was Miami showing their championship pedigree. I disagree with the series going less than seven; Parker was absolutely doing work in those playoffs up until he got hurt. It's not like the games the Spurs won were particularly close either (sans game 1 which they won without Green hitting a ridiculous amount of 3s).
As for the Parker shot, yes that was flukey, but with the way he performed that season and the fact he nailed that same shot multiple times against Memphis and GS is proof he was capable of doing it.
phlip pls
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