Why Spurs-Heat II is the rare Finals with nothing to lose
Around this time of the NBA schedule, we end up talking a whole lot about legacies. Whose legacy is being expanded, diminished, created anew or totally demolished? How do these new respective legacies compare to those of various historical analogues and antecedents?
It's understandable--these are the highest stakes one can be playing for in the NBA, and so it makes sense that those stakes should reflect in that which is most important for the league's eternity: The role one plays in its history. It might be silly, but that doesn't make it unimportant.
The 2014 NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs, to be commenced tomorrow, is no exception to this, but it is a somewhat unique instance. Usually in a Finals matchup, the height of the stakes implies the inevitability of a precipitous drop for those who come out on the losing end, with as much to be lost as to be gained for those participating. But this year, though there will be winners, there will be no true losers. This is the rare Finals where there is nothing much to be lost.
Look at the teams, coaches and players involved in this series, and try to find the one that really needs this championship to secure their place in the Association's sun. Every player with a chance of going to the Hall of Fame (as well as both head coaches) already has the resume to basically coast on in - yes, even Chris Bosh - and they all already have multiple championship rings to their credits. Kawhi Leonard is the only title-less player on either side who might someday need the titles to bolster a HOF resume, but in just his third year and yet to even make an All-Star team, it's far too early to begin to consider such things for the breakout Spurs forward.
In the past, the presence of LeBron James would ensure the potential for individual catastrophe, since maybe no player in NBA history has ever had as much to prove as LeBron, and in the past, each failure to do so brought about a reckoning for both his basketball caliber and his personal character. But it's been a long time since he's had any such failure, and in the meantime he's racked up two championships and carried a creaky Heat team to its fourth straight Finals. If he lost his first playoff series in three years to a 62-win Spurs squad that most agree is an all-around better team than this Heat edition, it certainly wouldn't help his legacy, but it couldn't really hurt it that much either, could it?
In the meantime, these franchises have already won seven of the last 15 NBA championships between them and, were they to lose in this year's Finals, would still have winning records for their All-Time finals appearances. No matter who wins, the Spurs will still be the model franchise across all professional sports (six Finals appearances in 15 years in the NBA's third-smallest TV market), and the center of the NBA universe will remain in Miami, with not only the world's best player, but - especially with the recent struggles of the Knicks, Celtics and Lakers - arguably the league's most reliable and powerful big-market brand.
You could say this was true before last year's Spurs-Heat series as well, since the Heat (and LeBron especially) had gotten the monkey off their backs with their first championship against the Thunder in 2011. But the difference between one and two was enough that had LeBron lost, bringing his overall Finals record to 1-3, people could have written off the single title as a fluke - disqualified as coming at the end of a lockout season anyway, as Reggie Evans somewhat idiotically argued during the regular season - and stuck with the LeBron (Usually) Can't Win the Big One angle as the predominant lens with which to view his postseason history.
Once you've won multiple titles as a team's best player, though, it's just varying degrees of all-time greatness at that point. He's there, as is Dwyane Wade, as is Tim Duncan, as is even Tony Parker, to a somewhat lesser extent. Gregg Popovich is obviously the greatest coach of his generation, with only Phil Jackson as a peer from the last 40 years, and Erik Spoelstra has proven over the last four postseasons that he's not a liability or a caretaker, but rather one of the biggest reasons that the Heat have made the Finals all four times. None of the key players in this series has anything left to prove: They've all been there and done that, answered the bell and rang it again.
Of course, just because nobody in this series can really have their legacy hurt by its outcome, that's certainly not to say that nobody can be helped. Duncan and Popovich can win titles as player and coach 15 years apart from one another, something that's never been done before by a player/coach duo and likely never will be again. Timmy's fifth title would also break his tie with Shaq for the most of any big man since Kareem, and match Kobe for the most of any star player of the post-Jordan era. A fifth ring for Pop would also tie Heat don Pat Riley and old Minneapolis Lakers leader John Kundla for the third-most of any head coach in NBA history.
And you know there's a Legacy Watch going on for LeBron, too. Another win for LBJ would give him the threepeat, the NBA's first since the Shaq/Kobe Lakers, matching the early consecutive title run for Michael Jordan, and bringing him halfway to tying His Airness in overall title count. It would also remove maybe the final advantage for Larry Bird in the fight to be known as the greatest Small Forward in NBA history: With a third title, LeBron would tie the Legend, while also already having more career points, Win Shares and MVP awards. Spoelstra could also move into sixth place all-time among coaches with three titles, Wade could come one away from Kobe among 21st-century shooting guards with his fourth, and so on and so on.
When you're dealing with The Finals, there's always going to be legacy concerns for those involved, always a chance for the primary participants to pad their resumes in meaningful and impactful ways - LeBron could be on title seven going for eight, and suddenly it'd all be about the Chase For Russell's 11. But so often, there's a chance for the impact to be negative - LeBron yet again proving he can't win the big one, or Kobe being unable to win without Shaq, or Kevin Durant and Dwight Howard showing that they're not ready yet, or whatever other unfortunate narrative gets tacked on to the loser.
This year, there will only be one plausible storyline accompanying whatever team comes up short: They were great, but the other guys were greater. And that means we can just enjoy this series as a showdown between the league's two best teams, with two of its best coaches and a handful of the best players of the 21st century on both sides.
We probably won't ever be able to be completely rid of the hackneyed storylines - already, the media is trying to hype up a genuine dislike between the two teams, as if this was Lakers/Celtics and not just two competitive teams meeting in The Finals for a second consecutive year - but this is about as close as we're going to get, and that's a beautiful thing.