Tim Duncan, LeBron James square off in personal rubber match

Surprise, surprise… Basketball’s two best teams are back in NBA Finals

By: Joe Mags

The 2006-07 NBA season seems like multiple basketball lives ago. Isiah Thomas was in his first season as head coach of the New York Knicks. Jason Kidd and Vince Carter were teammates in New Jersey. The Pistons were the best team in the Eastern Conference, winning their fifth divisional title in six seasons.

A lot has changed since that season, and yet so much has stayed the same.

After a 58-win regular season earned them a No. 3 seed in the Western Conference, it took the San Antonio Spurs just sixteen playoff games to advance to the 2007 Finals. The Spurs were going to their fourth NBA Finals in nine seasons.

Two-time MVP Tim Duncan completed his tenth-consecutive regular season with per-game marks of 18 ppg, 10 rpg and 2 bpg. Those numbers jumped up during the 2007 post-season, as the future first-ballot Hall of Famer averaged 22.2 points, 11.5 rebounds and 3.1 blocks.

Meanwhile in the East, a new force was taking over: the super genius, freight train on legs known as LeBron James. His Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the Nets and Pistons in six-games each, and James – who scored over 27 points per game for the third-consecutive season – was picking up speed as one of the best players in the Association.

Only no one told the Spurs to go easy on him.

The Cavaliers were completely outmatched by the experience of San Antonio – as well as their superior talent and depth – and Duncan’s team swept LeBron and company. (Duncan and the Spurs shouldn’t have done that: LeBron was just a boy.)

The years that have passed since the 2007 NBA Finals – the least-viewed Finals in NBA history – can seemingly be measured by what LeBron James did and did not do. The last two seasons have been about LeBron James and “his mission”: as if no other player has a mission to win championships; as if no other player should dare to dream about acquiring what is rightfully LeBron’s.

And yet, if the basketball bounces differently last June – if Kawhi Leonard‘s foul shots suck through the net, if Ray Allen doesn’t cleanly receive the basketball in the corner in Game 6 – San Antonio would be the defending champions right now, the winners of five NBA Championships in total.

A few bounces of the basketball and LeBron James would have more defeats in the NBA Finals than triumphs.

The 2013 NBA Finals was arguably the game’s most popular Finals since Michael Jordan. Why? Yes, Miami is a sexier market than Cleveland, and yes, a more competitve series lends itself to better ratings, but as important a factor as any is that it is LeBron’s show – he is the most popular athlete in America – and LeBron James in his prime on a championship-caliber team has the NBA rising in value quicker than any professional sports league in the world.

The Los Angeles Clippers just sold for $2 Billion, and the Milwaukee Bucks sold for $550 million. That doesn’t happen without LeBron James. That’s how much his star power is worth to the league and the sport.

LeBron was only a fraction of the star he was in 2007, and he was also playing for an inferior team – a dull, lazy organization. And furthermore, LeBron’s team had no chance of winning the finals that year. Nobody wants to see LeBron’s team blown out; fans want the theatre of LeBron’s team having to conquer their opponent in as close a series as possible.

That’s what made the 2013 NBA Finals so exhilarating: no one knew if Miami could beat San Antonio until they did it.

A year later, LeBron James is gunning for his third-consecutive NBA Championship and Finals MVP. Basketball fans virtually know everything about LeBron James; there is even a Samsung mobile app centered around the concept of following James – a man who already markets himself as a King and deems his fans “witnesses.” The Miami Heat are Generation Y’s team.

San Antonio is not usually an open book, they’re a team that embraces being largely mysterious. For the better part of two decades, Duncan, Gregg Popovich, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili have been winning basketball games, and that’s always come first – regardless of their opponent.

That’s what made Duncan’s recent comments about taking care of business this time so fascinating. San Antonio has always let their play do the talking; when a player wins 50 games every season and has four Larry O’Brien trophies to back up their play, Duncan does not need any words. But last season was a game-changer for San Antonio. The Spurs had never previously lost in a NBA Finals, and with last season’s series as the most heavily viewed of their five NBA Finals appearances by far, it is easy to see why this rematch means so much to them.

For Duncan, last season wasn’t like 2000, 2004, 2006 or 2008 when they failed to repeat as champions, or like 2011 when the Spurs were bounced in the opening round by the Memphis Grizzlies. Losing Game 6 and 7 to Miami last season on the game’s biggest stage was so un-Spurs like. It was if Miami had out done them at what they do best.

It is arguable that Duncan and James are each the premier player of their eras, which is why it is so interesting to see these two very different teams matchup in the Finals now for the second season. LeBron may or may not be the game’s best player through the next decade, and Duncan debuted in the mid-1990s, and yet they headline the two best basketball teams in 2014 – seven years after they squared off in the ugly, one-sided NBA Finals in 2007, and a year removed from the preeminent Finals of recent memory.

And in a matter of weeks, we’ll see whether it’s Duncan or James who can claim to be the victor in their head-to-head series.

Joe Mags (@JoeMags_hoops) is a staff writer for pickinsplinters.com and interning for the Watertown Daily Times. Peace, love, recycle and ball.