Woj: Spurs' road to championship redemption

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How the Spurs' road to championship redemption began on a heartbreaking night in Miami

SAN ANTONIO – Everyone else bobbed into the center of the court, confetti tumbling down, and all these years later, all these triumphs and all those tears, the San Antonio Spurs laughed and danced and moved to the championship groove now. Near the bench, basketball's best general manager met eyes with its best coach, and R.C. Buford and Gregg Popovich wrapped into the longest, surest hug of the night, squeezing tighter and tighter. They let the tears cleanse them of the Spurs' longest year, the most jagged journey of all.
The tears poured down Buford's face, because it all rushed back to him now – that flight home from Miami, the hollowness of Tim Duncan and Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili in the wake of that Game 6 collapse to the Miami Heat a year ago, the way it gutted them all. The tears poured down Buford's face, because of the way that loss had devoured Popovich, the franchise's rock, over the summer, poured down because of the way one of the strongest, surest men Buford has ever known tortured himself over the fundamental lapses that had cost San Antonio a championship.
"It was hard for all of us, but Pop in particular," Buford told Yahoo Sports late Sunday, late in the Spurs dynasty, late in one of the greatest stories basketball has ever witnessed. Five championships now, and Buford confessed he had never been so moved, so overwhelmed, so fulfilled. The Spurs won this championship going away, four games to one over the two-time defending champion Heat, and yet they had never been so driven to exhaustion, so spiritually spent in the pursuit of redemption.
This championship had been the truest test of the Spurs way, and perhaps this is why the GM and coach wouldn't let go in this South Texas night. Truth be told, they climbed on that charter flight out of Miami a year ago so numb and uncertain and the idea they would ever climb back to this championship moment – that they would ever push past those Game 6 demons, past the advancing ages of the team's core and hold that trophy into the air – seemed downright delusional.

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Gregg Popovich and Tim Duncan celebrate their fifth NBA le. (NBAE/Getty Images)

"We had to get over it," Buford said. "It wasn't going away until we looked it in the eye and recognized what we had to do – Pop and me included. We wanted to help pull Tim and Manu and Tony across the finish line one more time, for everything they had done and sacrificed and committed here. We were 30 seconds away. And we didn't do it."I think we all wondered if we could get over it – until we got to training camp. Pop turned on, and challenged the mentality of our group and we faced the reality of last year. We faced the reality of the mistakes that we made; the things that didn't allow us to finish the job. Pop didn't let anybody hide from it. We all recognized that we could've been better, that we would have to be better




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"The demons were dead, the grind gone and maybe the greatest coach in the NBA's history had been freed of that lost night, that lost championship, on the shores of Biscayne Bay."