April 26, 2022 • 45 mins
Hosted by 7-time champion Robert Horry and Jabari Davis, NBA Finals File dives deep into the greatest Finals series in NBA history, breaking down the best moments, storylines and matchups using rare archival audio from the NBA, and the personal touch that only Big Shot Bob can give.
In this episode of NBA Finals File, we examine the 2013 Finals, Spurs vs Heat. An epic back-and-forth 7-game battle filled with future Hall-of-Famers and spectacular performances. The Miami Big 3 are going for back-to-back titles vs the San Antonio Big 3, but Ray Allen is the player who steps up and makes one of the greatest shots in NBA history. Rob and Jabari talk about the legacy altering significance of the series to LeBron, D. Wade and Bosh, where the Ray Allen game-tying 3 ranks among the most clutch shots of all-time, and Rob shocks us with his first ever "Big Shot Bob" award for the most clutch player in the series.
NBA Finals File is available on the iHeart app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. NBA Finals File is a production of iHeartMedia and the NBA.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the NBA Finals. Filed with Robert Ori and
Jabari Davis. I'm Robert Ori is seven time NBA champ,
and I'm happy to be here with Jabari. I gotta
be honest with you. It still blows my mind, you know,
growing up an NBA fan in the Greater Los Angeles era,
during the showtime era. You know, to be exact, you know,
I've had a charmed existence and now look I'm covering
you know, I covered the league for a decade. I
(00:24):
had stopped at USA Today, Basketball Insiders and whatnot, and
now I'm talking to Robert freaking or about the Finals.
I gotta be honest with your life is pretty good.
His life is great for me. Man. To be here
with you, Jabari, I've seen you across the years and
to interact with you now. To be doing this podcast
with you, was gonna be fan tax to rehash all
the great NBA finals. I think I was a part
of a couple of me but we'll see the arts.
(00:51):
But it's just a great feeling to be here. Man.
It's gonna be a great podcast, and I'm so ready
to get the inside scoop into what goes on in
each little series each Finals and trying to get some
players on here to talk about those moments that happened.
Look at you be modest over there. Oh yeah, you
had a couple of moments. Yeah yeah, maybe one or
two to Rob's point. Each week we'll be deep diving
(01:22):
into one of the greatest NBA Finals series of all time,
and we'll examine the moments of storylines that made NBA
his Firelock James Ron James with the rejection. The first
series that we'll be discussing will be NBA Finals, which
featured the Big Three Miami Heat versus the Spurs team
that was starting in the transition basically from their tim
Tony in Manu Era. Yeah, you know what, the Big Three,
(01:45):
the new Big Three versus the old Big Three, the
Big Three of San Antonio who had mono genobody coming
off the bench. This series was incredible, man, it went
back and forth, and I can't wait to get into
it and talk about the good, the bad. And So
we have the Miami Heat. The previous year they beat
the thunder the obviously to win the title. We have
(02:06):
a celebration tonight. Congratulations to the NBA champion Miami Heat.
This season they went sixty six and sixteen UH and
they finished first in the Southeast Division. Rob This team
took a trip to the Great Wall of China ahead
of the season, and coach Bolster he spoke directly to
the team building that came as a result of that trip.
(02:26):
The most beneficial thing is taking a trip like this
as a team halfway across the world, experiencing a new culture,
spending so much time around each other away from the
basketball court, experiencing new things together, sightseeing together. That helps
the team bonding and building. I think some of these
experiences will remember for the rest of our lives, even
(02:47):
coming off the title the previous season. Can you speak
to what a team trip or event or things of
that nature can do for a squad in terms of camaraderie.
But the camaraderie comes together because you get a time
to talk to each other and people do understand esk
mere important than you know sometimes playing together because you
can get on the same page when you're sitting there
having a conversation where I think I think it's with
a thirteen hours sixteen hours flight to China, so you
(03:09):
have a lot of time to interact with one another,
and so you're sitting there say yo, man, this is
what I like to do, because a lot of times
coaches put players in situation because they think that's best
foot a player. When a player like, no, I really
don't like that, but sometimes they don't, you know, speak
up on it and think about it. You're sitting there
with Dwayne Way, Lebron James, Tony, Parker Mount and Jenova.
Tim dun't say I like to come off a screen
(03:29):
this way. You know, when I drive right, I'm looking
for you to do this when I go left. You know,
so many different aspects of the game that people don't
think about because you got to know what one side
of the game just like you know the other side
of the game. And when you're able to talk about
it and come together, you can become one and win
a championship. This was also a season where they had
a four and seven stretch, you know, before going into
(03:51):
what was a historic franchise run. The Strea survives for
as I'm interested from the player's perspective, you know, and
you're from inside the locker room because you see it
on social media. You see nerds like me, you know,
we're going nuts and going crazy. You know you know
that the sky has fallen. Well, anytime a super team
(04:12):
has a as a rough stretch, what's the tone with
the team during these types of stretches. I'm wondering do
players actually feel that level of scrutiny. Oh, players feel
scrutiny because you have expectations. And when you have a
huge expectation because as a player, you know, going into
a season, you look around that locker room like, okay,
we got a championship quality team, or you can look
(04:32):
around the locker room like, man, we can add another
piece and we might have a championships quality team. Those
are the type of things that you know as a
player because reality sets in. And I think when you
have that scrutiny, when you know you have the talent,
especially when you have a big three and that's what
everybody's talking about, it can weigh on you. And sometimes
you have that love because not because if you're not
(04:52):
playing good, because you put so much pressure on yourself
to perform, that those performances aren't up to part. And
that's what it boils down onto, not putting that pressure
on you doing what you do best, going out there
and saying, hey, this is what we need to do
to improve ourselves, and don't put pressure on just play
the game, because the game, at the end of the
day is easy. You pass, you dribble, you shoot. You
(05:13):
just gotta do it at a high level. Fair enough,
fair enough, and needless to say, they didn't panic. They
ended up going like I said on a story run,
as the game started to mound up more and more,
the games started to become more playoff games and teams
want to break your streak. They have one there twenty
second to the secutive game. They are tied with the
Ocean on the O eight Rockets for the second best
(05:35):
winning streak in NBA history. Once we got to twenty three,
he was like, man, we don't need ten games away
from the record. Let's go for it. You know, you
started hearing to the world history and as a competitor
and as a team to be a part of history
books and trying to get the thirty four or something
that we wanted to do. Five was over the last
(05:56):
forty eight nights, thirty three blocks. No doubt, we're gonna
break that record for the first time I mentioned in
the streak. Find the guys now. We took that moment
to acknowledge each other on that that experience, and then
that was that. Of course you would like to broke
the record, but I mean, twenty seven games in a row,
that's great game win streak. Do you remember that streak? Together?
(06:18):
We won't go off tangent. You know too much, and
and I can I can already feel you know, super producer,
you know Peters, you know Peter's eyes looking at me
right now. But do you remember that streaking? What it
felt like? And did you think that they had a
chance to get to thirty three? You know what? I
was looking at that and everybody was saying, Okay, can
they catch the Lakers streak? And I'm sitting back saying,
they got Lebron James, they got Bosh and Dwayne Wade,
(06:40):
these guys are playing really good, and they got another
Hall of Famer on their bench into what and uh real,
And so I was like, it's possible. But the thing
about streaks, though, everybody want to be that streak in there,
and so that bulls I got bigger and bigger and bigger.
So at the end of the day, I looked at
this gathers are like, no, They're not gonna do it.
They're gonna get to about twenty eight, and then that
(07:01):
you know they'll lose it. But it's hard to keep
a streaking up like that because you have to keep
the mental there. Think about the Bulls had to do it,
the Lakers had to do it. There's so many teams
that had these historic streets, and it's taxing mentally because
you've got to be on point each and every night
and everybody's gunning for you. Man, I can't even imagine
what that feels like. But let's keep it going talking,
and let's go ahead and break down the Spurs their
(07:22):
path to the finals. They the previous year they lost
in the conference finals. So, okay, see this season, you know,
this particular season, they went fifty eight and twenty four.
Guess what, they finished first in the Southwest Division. They
were pretty steady. You know, they were pretty steady throughout
the year. So what's new when it comes to the
Spurs man? What can you say that? That's the Spurs man,
that's the Spurs. They're consistent each and every year, and
(07:43):
they had a lot to do. It started off with
David Robinson and they kind of rolled over to Tim
Duncan and then Tim held the ship afloat for seventeen
eighteen years. And that's the thing. And you get guys
like Tony Parker, and that's and we watched Tony Parker.
I don't people understand how good Tony Parker was. Think
about this. This is a point guard. He led the
(08:04):
league and scoring multiple times points in the paint as
a point guard scoring points in the paint, So that
lets you know his toughness. And he's not afraid to
get into paint and mixed up with the big guys.
Because think about you got guys like Shock, you know,
like Tim, you got Dwight, how you got these beasts
in the paint ibaka that will put you on your butt.
But Tony was not afraid to go there and score points.
(08:24):
So that's what you have to look at. And then
you haven't Genobley probably one of the best six man
ever to play this game, you know, even though he
was in his level season at the time of this
championship run, and he was, you know, not Genoboli, you know,
three or four years ago, but he was still that
crafty guy. And you had a young guy on the
rise by the name of Kauai Leonard in his second year.
So you had a lot of you know, things going
on in that series. But each team was had a
(08:47):
big three that you could depend on. So it was
it was one of those roles that each team said, Hey,
you know what, it's not gonna be the big three,
It's gonna be what we all all like to call
the others. That's means bitch players and the role players.
It's funny. I have a note about the others coming
up here. Of course you know you're giving them. I'm
talking to you about it. I was I was going
(09:07):
to reference that. But the last bit that I have,
the last bit that I have on San Antonio that
this team, of course, you know, as I said, you know,
they're the model of consistency. It was a team that
only lost back to back games three times throughout the season,
and the only time they lost the restrate was down
the stretch when Pop wasn't playing guys in preparation for
the you know, for the postseason. But let me ask
you this, when it comes to Pop in that type
of consistency of you know, of course, having generational talent,
(09:30):
you know that's always going to be important, but you
know that, you know, we've seen it that doesn't necessarily
guarantee you the types of success that we've seen from him.
Is it a leadership thing? Is it attention to detail?
Is a combination of things. I think the key point
you said that is attention to detail and what and
the thing that Pop does. He just doesn't throw talent
on a team. You think about it, you have to
(09:51):
have the right pieces in this machine to make it work,
and each cog has a role to do. If you
look at the Spurs team that had a great point guard,
they had an extraordinary two guarden, Danny Green who could
shoot threes, who could be swapped out with an athletic
guy with Mino Janova. Then you had Kawhi Lennard who
would go to three, and then you had of course
Tim and Thiago Splinter, and you had a traditional team
(10:14):
where each person's role was defined. There was no like, Okay,
let me put this guy in. What will he do?
Will he be the X factor? And that's how san
Antonio system has been since Pop has been that each
person has a defined role and that's what makes them
so good. And plus you look at this team and
they always glide by and you never think they're gonna
be that good because they're not flashy. They don't have
(10:37):
anybody who's gonna come out and you know, do crazy
dunks on people. You know, But next thing, you know,
you look at the statue sheets and you look at
the winnings. They right there every time because they do
things on a consistent basis and they have the right
pieces that fit and Pop manages everything to a perfection. Rob.
You know, I can't you know, I can't avoid the question.
(10:59):
You played for Pope, you played for Rudy t you
play for you know, Phil Jackson. And now of course
there's different ways you know, to the mountaintop, but how
can you can you speak to the different you know,
they're different approaches. You know this is amazing. Um, when
you upper echelon coach and you win in championships, you
pretty much had the same philosophy and Pop feel and
(11:20):
Rudy they all emphasized defense, they all emphasized working together
as team. You know, you're gonna have the guys on
the team of the big dogs. But he makes sure
those big dogs understand that the little dogs are just
as a poigno and everybody is the same. Because if
if everybody is on one page, we're gonna win a championship.
And Pop was great about putting the pieces together, um,
(11:41):
making sure you can massage the egos the right way,
because we know all of us athletes, we have egos.
We all think we're the best thing they ever step
on the court. But you gotta understand that there's are
people that their teammates of yours are a little bit better.
You're doing this, and you're a little bit better doing
things that they aren't doing. So I think Pop was
great at adding pieces at the right time, you know,
to saying, Okay, Tony, you need to back up. You know,
(12:02):
my new Jenova, you need to come off the bench.
Tim You know, we don't need to go to you
as much until you have the misfast and the advantages.
And Pop always understood the intricacies of the game and
how to manipulate it and make it work in his favor.
That's really amazing, And it's funny. It's not that I
expected them to have completely opposing you know, styles, but
you know, I guess it makes sense. You know, you're
(12:24):
you're you're only going to be successful at this level.
You know, like if there are certain commonalities and they're
the all hands on deck. You know, mindset, I can
I can certainly appreciate from pop and from championship level coaches.
All right, on that note, I don't mean to cut you.
Let's go ahead and take a quick break right there.
But when we come back, let's jump into the series. Yes,
the series. I'm ready for this. All right, welcome back
(12:50):
to the NBA Finals file here with Robert Ory and
Jabari Davis's always good. It's gonna it's gonna feel good
saying that for a while. I's gonna be honest with you,
all right, So for the sake of to listen, mass
at NBA Final Files with Jabari Davis and Robert Ory.
Oh wait, Rob, you're giving me top billing. I don't.
I don't know. I don't know. I'm gonna feel about that. Yes,
I gotta give you top billing. You really don't, but
(13:13):
I'll take it. I'll absolutely You know, you just started
and I come up the bench. You know that's what
I used to do. Do know? I appreciate the sentiment. Now,
for the for the sake of the listeners, I'll quickly
run through the path that each team took to get
to the finals. For the heat in the conference finals,
Eastern Conference Finals. They beat the Pacers for three. Never
take this for granted, going on this ride to the
(13:33):
next round and these next four, that's whatever it takes
for the Spurs. They beat the Grizzlies, they swept them. Four. Oh.
San Antonio sweeps the grizz The Spurs are headed to
the NBA Finals. Over the course of the conversation, we'll
get into the coaching matchup, so we won't, you know,
do that here, but let's go ahead and break down
(13:55):
Game one if you don't mind. Sure, you know, Game
one was one of those fillers. When you have two
teams like this, they have a big three, as we mentioned,
they usually come out and try to fill each other out.
So usually a low scoring game, and and they came out,
you know, testing each other, seeing how you're gonna play defensively,
and that's what good teams do. You know, we don't
come out with our best plays right off the bat
(14:17):
because we save a little bit, because think about it,
it's gonna be a long series. It's not just one
game and then we move on to the next team.
It's gonna be a seven game series. So you have to,
you know, hide some things that are not working, or
you try to find out what you know, who's playing well.
And that's what this series is gonna boil down to
who's playing well and who's not. Yeah, and when you
look at the action for game one, you know, it
(14:38):
was like you know, to your point, it was an
absolute defensive battle throughout, you know, especially down the stretch,
which we'll get to. You know, Duncan in particular, he
got off to a slow offensive start, but he winds
up grinding out, you know, twenty and fourteen to get
it into dunking out to the easy layout, dunking and
scored eight of the last ten for San Antonio Lebron.
You know, comes through with the second straight final striple double.
James what the first. That's not a bad way to start,
(15:02):
you know. Kauai, you know, as you mentioned earlier, he
wasn't necessarily the star of the team at this at
this point they were still transitioning. He puts up a
meager ten and ten, but he clearly impacts the game
in multiple ways. And to the point that you were
just you know, speaking on can you talk about the
difference between face of the team over the course of
a regular season as opposed to matching up in a
series like this one, when you know, attention to detail
is seemingly higher. Yeah, the good teams know who they're
(15:24):
gonna be preparing for in the finals. Are doing the
you know, the playoffs because you hold back plays, you
don't play a certain defense you might try, like in
the first quarter of the first games. Okay, if we
run into this team again, we're gonna try this matchup.
Oh it worked, so we're gonna move it. And you
say it that way, the team won't prepare for it
when you get ready for the series. And I think
(15:45):
that's what Pop love to do. He had he had
a bunch of plays that he only ran in the playoffs.
He'll try him like once or twice, you know, during
the regular season. But I noticed from playing for Pop,
so I knew this part. But when you've got guys
like Kauai that are X factors, you know, Kauai is
on in his second year, people still trying to figure
him out. He was a heck of defensive player, and
he was loving to match up with Lebron Love the
(16:05):
match up with Duane Wade because he was trying to
make his name at this point. In time as been
a two way player as a termin they'd like to use.
So it was, it was. It was a great matchup
in the first game, you know, Lebron trying to figure
out how to go up against crafty model Guenoboli and
Rayality coming off the bench. It was if you think
about this, this game had a lot of future Hall
of famers, all right. So I'm not trying to get
(16:28):
you in trouble with Pops, So you know, feel free
to say, you know, the next question if you know,
if you don't necessarily want to answer this. But I
always felt from the outside looking in that there was
pretty much you know, strategy and gamesmanship going on over
the course of the regular season and all throughout with
him in terms of how he pretty much you know,
selected Okay, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna run a
lot of sets you know in big matchups, and you
guys that we might potentially see in the postseason, especially
(16:50):
in the finals, and even even as far as sitting
certain players you know in big matchups. Was that part
of it or was it really just a matter of
Pop's gonna do what Pop does. Hey, it's not checking
his chest when it comes to Pop, you know, he's
gonna try to play the mind game. Like I said,
He's gonna do different things and throw different matchups out there.
You know, you've got guys like you know, Thiago spinners,
So we're gonna use a brute force in there, and
(17:12):
then we're gonna put tim at before. We're gonna go
big and they can go small. That's a great thing
about Pop when he had his lineups as he wanted them,
he can go big, he'd go small. He can do
whatever he needed to do because if you think about
the history of him, he had pieces. He could rotate
one to two, three, three, four, four or five. He
could just move guys over to mix space for other guys.
And that's how he is. He he he'll put a
(17:33):
play in, run it, and now he might not player work,
and he might not run that player again until the
end of the game because he's like, oh, it worked
to a perfection like that. Let's say, even though he
could score on it again and again during the course
of the game, he will hold it because just in
case we need to play down the stretch where it's
a guaranteed bucket, we'll hold it to them like you
(17:54):
said Chest, not checkers, And I can certainly appreciate that.
All right, Rob, So there's two fifteen left in again,
and the spurs are up for At this point, everyone's
locked in and almost overplaying on anyone cutting. Duncan flashes
across the lane and essentially creates the space for a
cross court pass where man who winds up finding Danny
on the wing, and Danny hits a huge three to
put them up seven. Is that a play that Pops
(18:16):
sets up that way? Is it? Is it more? Is
it a reading react type situation? Because it absolutely worked
a perfection When you look back at this play, if
I can remember correctly, I think this play is called
dive role. As one of Pop's favorite players, he likes
to run where Tim says to pick and roll and
you dive, and the purpose of Tim divings to try
to draw that defense in. And if you watched the play,
(18:39):
you had an over the top pass by Manu, and
Manu is an excellent passer. But when Mike Miller bites
on that, Danny Green sees this and moves into the
line of site for Mano, you don't believe that Danny
Greens lots of three. That's cut Danny Green frock time
Town his fourth three pointer of the game, and this
equals the law right just sleep for san Antonio and
(19:01):
Mino rips it across court to take that pass from
Mino for three, and that's one of the pop's favorite plays,
because what are you gonna do? Give Tim the over
the top, you're gonna give up the three, And Mike
Miller had to make a choice there and he chose wrong.
I mean, you know, especially with with with the way
basketball was played at that at that point and we
were with the focus I can see especially you got
Tim Duncan rolling it as hard as he was. I
(19:23):
understand making that adjustment, but you know it came back
to buy them into behind. Yeah, you know you're thinking
about it. Tim was always one of the you know
up in years and everybody thinks does he still has it?
Apparently he does, because he was taking him to the
whole had twenty points him and TP were going to work.
TV had twenty one and for Danny Green to sit back,
I think he said a record in this series for
(19:44):
the number threes he made. But he was shooting extremely
well in that first game and he knocked down that
three to uh put us, you know, kind of cement
a moment where hey, you know what, we're gonna be
up and we're gonna win this series. You're exactly right
about him setting that record. I had that, you know,
noted later on, you know at the time, you know
he said it for twenty five steph eventually of course
(20:04):
hanging back there later on with but you know, which
is to be expected. But you know, shout out to
Danny Green for that. Danny Green was when those sharp
shooters that you know, you didn't talk about for a
while until you're like, wow, did he just knocked down
three threes on us? We got to cover him. He
was that quiet assassin from three all right, rob. So
we get down to the final, you know, the final play,
the shot clock is running out. We got prime Lebron
(20:27):
in his peak, in his figure, the peak of his
physical powers, matched up against you know, matched up against
Tony Parker in the corner. You know, Tony Parker at
one point falls down the one knee. He winds up
getting back up spinning. You know she she you nailing
a bank shot, You'll off the glass. You're right in
his face. I nearly lost it. Still juggling talk to
(20:48):
her to to shoot, just gets it off the time
and he facts to them what a shot from Parker
gets off his fate and put Santa Tonio up four.
Now they'll look you to make sure that Parker got
it off before the shot clock expired. It was a
crazy play. I thought I lost the ball like three
or four times and uh then work out like I
(21:10):
wanted to. But you know, at the end, I was
just trying to get a shot up and felt good
when they left my hand, and h I was happy
I went in. Let me ask you this in that moment,
if you're the Spurs, how are you feeling? You know,
you went into Miami. You stole Game one in great
fashion in that manner. First of all, it me you
got six two versus six nine, and the six two
(21:31):
wins that battle. That's a lot. That's a big confidence builder.
And you know, I'm not it's not like Tony needed
the confidence building. But sometimes when you can go into
someone's arena and still one, you've done your job. They
still Game one, which is most pivotal game in the
series because now you gotta put them against the world.
But for Tony to do his Curly Neil impression. For
(21:53):
people who don't know who Curly Neil is, he was
a Harlem globe trotter. He was on one knee, spins
and knocks down the shot and the still Game one
in Miami was perfect for the Spurs. It was a
perfect scenario because Spurs is a type of team that
doesn't lose at home, and they were on the perfect
path now to win this series because they stole one
in Miami's building, Rob, what about the flip side of that?
(22:15):
You're Miami, you know that, you know historically, you know
Lebron has been able to lose the first game of
the series and still come back and win. Now you're
at home, you know, you know eventually you're gonna have
to go on the road to San Antonio. But you're
at home and you know that you can't go down
O two. Well, Uh, that's pretty clear. Uh, there are
plays to be made, UM, and our offensive inefficiency really
(22:36):
going down the stretch most of the fourth quarter, UM
probably hurt us more than anything. So we gotta gather
ourselves and get ready for Game two. Yeah, you definitely
can't go to O two because Spurs don't lose at home.
And for Miami, they have to have their mind say, hey,
you know what, it's cool. They came in, they won
game one. You know what, let's protect our home court.
(22:57):
Let's go out and win game two. In order to
win this series anywhere, we have to go on the
road and win. So we're gonna win at home and
go in San Antonio and get one way back where
we want to be. And I think that's the mindset.
And when you look at this team that the Heat had,
they are a bunch of champions. They are a bunch
of guys who's been there. They just won a championship.
So there's like, you know what this is. This isn't
a place we haven't been. So let's go out and
play hard. Because when I back so against the wall,
(23:19):
that's when we're most comfortable. And if you look at
the way they're gonna come out in game two, that's
how I played out to be an interesting note you
know that I noticed here from the ESPN recap on
this game, it stated that many of the Miami fans
left the building during the officials review on Parker's last shot,
and it actually winds up being a bit of foreshadowing
for the rest of the series. Yeah, you know, fans
(23:39):
have a tendency when they think their team has lost
to leave the building. I've been a part of a
couple of games in my career where fans left the
next thing. You know, that's a man, I can't believe
y'all lost. Agains. No, we won the game, but you
were down. There is no we won that game. So
never leave the builder until the buzzer goes off. You know,
they have that saying, you know, don't leave until you
know the ladies things. But you know, Tony Parker is
a b when it comes and playing one on one basketball.
(24:02):
He's so quick. At one point in time, I think
he was it was the quickest player in basketball from
winning the floor to the other. And then of course
when you got a main anchor in the stable like
Tim Duncan to anchor your team defensively, you can you
can try all other things because you think about that team.
We always talk about offense, but if you look at
that team, though, everybody on that starting lineup can play
(24:25):
defense on both teams you have. San Antonio had a
great defensive team Miami. He had a great deference. You know,
you don't talk about the defense because you've got guys
like Jenobeh Lebron who can excite you with the offensive plays.
But these two teams were very defensive minded and could
stop you at any point. Yeah. To that point, if
I'm not mistaken, the Spurs were third overall the defensive
efficiency on the year. Uh the heat you know. To
(24:47):
that point again, you know, they were seventh of defensive efficency.
So I guess coming in we absolutely should have known
it was gonna be this type of battle and get
in Game one absolutely did not disappoint. Yeah, because sometimes
you're gonna have these games where guys who play defense
you might have other game, but they're like, I thought
this was a defensive team. Um, they came out scoring.
I thought the team could stop them, but they let
them score. Hey, that's a great thing about NBA basketball.
(25:08):
Each and every night is something different. And you watch
these teams and you watch them play, watch them play hard,
and they figured each other out because every like I said,
every game, there's gonna be some moments where you go, uh,
I can do use this against them in the next game.
And that's what great teams do and great coaches can
figure it out. Because I don't know if you ever
watch coaches on the sideline and they'll reach back behind
(25:31):
the bench until their assistant coach is something that's them saying,
mark that playdown for us to use it later. Nice. Nice, Okay,
I have seen that take place, and I always kind
of wonder what the exchange was, But okay, that's good
to know. It's either that or mark that play down
the show. Hey, we need to stop this defensive because
they just killed us on his play. Oh you can say,
(25:51):
we're gonna mark this down because he messed up on
his play and we need to show him that he
keeps doing this and we need to find a way
to solve that problem. All a part of the strategy. Okay,
not as difficult game too, to the point that you
(26:12):
were just making Lebron and you know, and Boss and
has them to a lesser extent. You know, they did
a really good job of sort of building a wall defensively,
you know, making Tim's life at least difficult. Uh. The
Guards basically did the same on Toni, Duncan, and Parker.
They wound up combining eight for twenty seven from the floor.
While Danny Green was actually the one that led the
spursion scoring three. Danny Great, that's at three threes, and
(26:34):
we're gonna, I feel like we're gonna talk about Danny
Green a lot to see, you know, throughout this series.
But he went five for He went five for five
from Deepen in this game. Yeah, you know, Danny Green
came out shooting the ball extremely well, and that's what
makes the game really easy for guys like Tim Duncan
and Tony Parker because it stretches the floor. But in
this case, you know, Tim and Tonio, like you said,
they didn't have the Stella game if they had in
game one, Game one campaing for forty one points. Game two,
(26:58):
they only had what winning one points together. So it's
hard to try to keep that leveling the playoffs because
you've got the other teams saying, okay, what heard us
last game, Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, So they kind of
shut that down. And this series really just boils down
to what Big Three plays the best consistently throughout games,
(27:18):
because if you can get around, that is, if the
Big Three can get around at twenty point mark, they
usually win the game. I mean I said get around
in the twenty point part. I mean each player gets
around the twenty point mark, not as a whole, So
I messed that up. Sorry, no, no, no no worries. I
I knew what you meant before you before the benefit
of the listeners. I appreciate that clarification. And in this game,
you know, looking at some of the notes again, you
(27:40):
know Kauais matches up directly with Lebron. I actually watched
all of this game throughout, not just not you know,
not just eclipse of Highline. You know, he's he's matched
up directly with Lebron a lot, you know, and it's
crazy to think that like he did. I personally think
he did a fantastic job, even though Lebron still manages
the impact the game and every fasciating fans raised their
noise John and screamed by James Lebron to the basket lapter,
(28:03):
Jeames on the drive. You at seventeen points, your eight rebounds,
seven assists, three steals, three blocks. I just want to
try to make some plays and try to help our team. Uh.
I was the last line of defense, and and you know,
just being on both sides of the floor, being able
to make an impactage what it's all about. Off the
San Antonio Game three won one. Can you talk to like, basically,
(28:27):
what is it like when you're facing greatness like that?
The first thing you're gonna this is one where you're
gonna learn help. You gotta ask for help. You can't
be afraid to ask for help too. Because they are
great defensive players. But when I'm trying to go out
and play a great offensive player, I'm gonna need help
because I got to force them to a point where
I'm gonna have to need help. And then think about
(28:48):
the San Antonio Spurns. They have always been a great,
great help defensive team because you have someone like Tim
Duncan who could come over wall it off a block
of shot. You've got guys like my Genobli and and
we we know we talked about Kauai, but Dannick Green
was exceptional player two on the defensive end. So they
had a lot of guys that could switch, they could help,
(29:12):
that could rotate, and so this first team, that's what
they lived on. Hey, they lived on rotating. But when
you get into a rotation situation like that, it's gonna
be up to the others, as we mentioned earlier, to
knock down shots. And I think Ray Allen had third team,
James will drive it inside off to the left wing.
It's Alan for three, wide open three can Allan from Downtown,
(29:33):
you know, when you got him can come off the
bench and give you points. And you've got Mike Miller
who was key to knock down three stretching the floor.
He had nine points stole by James down. So when
you got those others, those guys coming off the bench
to stretch the floor, it makes it hard defensively for
the other team. Rob It's almost like we've been doing
this together for years and this isn't our very first
(29:54):
episode because this is that's exactly where I was going
with it. I want to talk a little bit about
the others. So this is the thing when it when
it comes to the all time great or even you
know they do the greats, right, I almost feel like
you can you can chalk them up for whatever about
whatever their averages are, maybe you know, maybe a little
bit more, but I I personally feel, especially in the finals,
(30:14):
oftentimes it's the others working around the fringes that make
the difference. So to your point, you know, you know
Danny Green, he plays a pivotal role for the for
the Spurs in this theories throughout this series, Ray Allen,
You're like, exactly, he went three for five for Deep
in this game, and that was on the heels at
three for four for Deep in game one. But Mario Chalmers,
he actually led the heating scoring for this game, and
he was pivotal with huge buckets in the second half.
(30:35):
Shomers end of the lane, push shot gout it unfound
at a rio to the line for another round one.
We gets a screen and spluttered out, finds Tiago inside
and he had it. Not the way by Miller Chalmers
across the line of change. Can you speak to that
in particular, the way that the other players actually impact
a big series like this, I think when each player,
(30:57):
When I look at Mario Chalmers, I think he took
pride in the where he played because he's going up
against one of the best point guards to play this
game in Tony Park, and every guy wants to be noticed,
and what better way to notice be noticed in them
on the biggest stage the NBA Finals. And if you
watched how Charmers played, Tony played him tough defensively, but hey,
like I said earlier, offense sometimes beats better defense. And
(31:19):
then on the flip side of that, Charmers was like
he didn't back down. He went at Tony two. You
know in that game he had nineteen points. He was
being aggressive, he was knocking nine shots. And that's what
it has to be. You can't you can have no fear.
You know that a lot of people says have no
fear when in the NBA Finals, and you know, you
gotta matchup that you can exploit. You can't sit back
and say, Okay, I'm gonna let the moment Conny. Sometimes
(31:42):
you gotta go out and take that moment. And Mario
Chalmers was a guy in this series. Every time he
had a moment, he took it. I definitely appreciate someone
stepping up big in the moment. Alright, time for another
break as things are heating up in this series, and
when we come back, we'll dive into games three and four.
(32:05):
How import does this game? Thirty five times in NBA
history of the Finals have been tied at a game
of piece. In thirty of those instances, the winner of
Game three went on to become the champion. All right,
let's go ahead and get into Game three, which was
you know, the finals blowout. You don't see that all
that often, you know, you used to see it back
in the day. You know, you in thinking about like,
(32:25):
you know, the Lakers back in the day with the
Boston massacre and whatnot. If you don't see too many
you know, actual like legitimate bona fide blowouts. This was
a one thirteen seventy seven Spurs win, you know that
in their first game back in San Antonio. And you
know what I've spoke about him earlier, We're gonna talk
about him here now. Danny Green actually leads the team
in scoring once again. He made he had twenty seven points.
(32:45):
He made a record seven threes. He was seven for nine,
and meanwhile the team was sixteen for thirty two. You
know what you're gonna get once again, like out of
duncan you at least you expect, you know, to know
what you're gonna get. You know what you're pretty much
going to get out of you know, like out of
tim and you know in mining like if he gets
it going. But what does it mean when a guy
like Danny Green is hitting like this? Danny Green was phenomenal. Um,
(33:08):
when you got a guy that can shoot three is
at a clip like he can, it helps the team
out greatly. And when you got a guy like Tony
who only had I think six points in this game,
and Tim only had twelve. When you got Danny Green,
who I know from playing for Pop probably didn't get
that many plays ran for him, but he's able to
knock down shots like this and do his thing is incredible.
So when you've got guys that can come out and
(33:30):
play hard and make it easier for the Big Three,
like Danna Green, and let's not forget about Gary Neil
because he had twenty four points in that game, also
carry a show. So when you got guys like that
are able to score at a clip, it makes it
easier for the bigs. The first half this game was
(33:50):
relatively close. It was fifty It was fifty to forty
four at the half, but the Spurs just poured it on.
In the second half. They out They actually outscored Miami
sixty three to thirty three. And the second Lebron and
the Wade, you know, they combined to go eighteen forty
six from the floor. You know, outside of Mike Miller
who went five for five from deep, nobody else even
reach double digits. Yeah, it was. It was difficult game
for the Heat thinking about Mario Chamans who had been
(34:12):
talking about in previous games played well zero points. Udonis
has them zero points, and so we always talk about
the others. When those others don't put any points on
the boys, it's kind of difficult for you to win.
And with Lebron only scoring fifteen is really gonna be difficult.
The Spurs wind up, you know, dominating the rebound battle
fifty two to thirty six, and they you know, and
they tied on twenty nine. Assist to go with it.
(34:33):
Let me talk. Let's talk about Pop. You talk, You
played for him. You know, we have to take advantage
of this. You know, I mentioned that, I mentioned that
sixty sixty three to thirty three run a moment ago.
Do you feel like it's it was just a matter
of adjustments for Pop or is there you know, anything
to the idea that sometimes a team will just get hot,
and you know the other team either doesn't master the
intensity or simply can't get it going. I think when
(34:55):
watching this game, san Antonio played so well at home.
Their fans are fantastic, and when you get home for
that first game of the finals, the energy is so
electric that it pushes you through a lot of moments.
It gives you that that that that ultimate high and
that ultimate of drilling, that you can do things that
(35:15):
you don't normally do. And you look at this game,
Danny Green twenty seven, Gary Neal Kauai four team. These
guys we're gonna talk about the Big three for Spurs.
These guys stepped up big because they're in the first
finals in front of their home crowd. So that had
a lot to do with it. And it's not just
you know, you know, the fact that he didn't play
(35:36):
that well and then guard that well. It's a little
bit of everything, but the most part was it comes
down to home cooking in this game for me in
my eyes, you know, Pop made their adjustments, but the fans,
with the energy and the emotions that the players had,
took him over the top. Speaking of home cooking, you
personally can relate to Danny Green, at least I feel
you can. You know, Danny goes off. Danny goes off
(35:57):
in this game. You know, you know, as we mentioned
in a couple of time, you went seven for nine
for Deep Wait way off. Let's talk about a fut
Slicks get to the green. That's a friend. Danny Green
again from downtown. Is it a matter of Pop looking
to get him more involved, get him activated? Is it
simply or is it more of you take with the
(36:19):
defensive games and he just got you know, he just
got it going. I think it is. It boils down
to what the defense gives you. Because Tony, Tim and
Manu have been killing in the paint. So what do
coaches do. We're gonna stop the points in the paint.
So now you're packing in defensively. Now the Spurs or
a team that shares the basketball extremely well, So now
(36:40):
we're at a point. Now, wait what we're gonna do. Oh,
let's give it to Danny Green. Let's give it to
Gary new and let's give it to whoever's open on
the three. And we started knocking down shots, Paul George,
Danny Green again from way downtown. Now that adjustment that
you thought was gonna help you out isn't working because
you've got a guy like Danny Green that knocked it
down from three fair enough, And what about on the
(37:02):
flip side of the ball, Because I want to talk
about Pops defensive schemes in particular, what is it about
there man like and and the reason why I say it,
and I mean no offense, but I'm gonna go ahead
and say it. I've always looked, I've I've looked at
Spurs rosters and said, how the hell did they defend
like that? How are they do? How are they doing?
The attention to detail deal? Is it your commanding? You know,
(37:22):
accountability from everybody? What is it about Pops defensive schemes?
It goes down to Pop when he drafts, he drafts
guys who can play both ends of the floor. You think,
but Tony wasn't a great defender, but he had the
quickness to play defense. And someone comes, hey, you gotta
play defense or to play you pay attention to details.
And that's what these guys do on the defense, vent,
(37:45):
you know, and shoot around. It's all about defense. It's
never about what we're gonna do offensive. We're gonna run
this set, We're gonna run that set if it works
so big, if it doesn't, we move on to another set.
And let me just say this about the Spurs. Spurs,
the team is a very intelligent team. They pay attention
to detail, like I said, and with the Spurs, they
always say We're gonna put a foot in the paint,
hustle out to the guy, run them off the three,
(38:07):
because we had one of the best shot blockers they
ever played this game, and Tim Duckan. So if we
run them off the three, we're gonna funnel them in
the team into Tim. So that's how that defense works there.
They want to play defense. They're not saving it for
the offensive and they're saving the offensive end for the
defensive end. So that's how the team works. They played
very very well for forty eight minutes, and we only
played well for the pockets of of the game. And
(38:29):
you know, you can't be the team that's good playing
that way. You got everything they wanted, and uh, that's
gonna result on the laws. So we gotta regroup and
get ready for game for let's go ahead and transition
the game four. The game you know, it's a game
of runs, you know, and shout out to you know,
shout out to the you know, the living legend students
who always says that, you know, it's a game of runs.
So the Spurs started off, you know, they went up
(38:50):
to in you know, then they were down ten. Then
you know, bores dial you know again, one of the
others that we speak that we've spoken of so many times.
You know, he helped Sparking eleven to run the end
the first half. Can you speak to We're what that
you know what that does for a team when a
guy like boars d I was the one that's doing it.
Is weird that we haven't mentioned bars d album for
(39:10):
the first three games, and now all of a sudden,
this guy comes out of nowhere. It comes out and
plays extreme with find some real shot block by Leonard
Spurs can hold it for the final shots, gonna go
in for the last for the game's time, and and
that's the preparation guys do, and that's what Pop has
that trust and guys, there be guys that be starting
(39:32):
all of a sudden, you might not get any run,
as we would see with Thiago Splinting later on in
this series. That you know, okay, he's a consistent basis,
he's doing this for me, He's Donna. All of a sudden,
now this other guy is playing better, and Pop's not
afraid to say, you know what, you're not playing well.
This guy's playing well. I'm gonna pull the plug on
you and put somebody else in and that's how bars
Da is like after James Smith, duntr nice feed the
(39:53):
tha you think about it, he had great years and feedings,
you know, doing wonderful things for them in the playoffs
and now he's with this with the Spurs and he
came up big because big time players show up in
big time moments. And what's better to bring the big
time out of than go up because the big time
player and Lebron who he had to guard in this
series at certain points. Yeah, it's it's funny, you know,
you go back, you think back, there were you know,
(40:14):
there were periods that you know, I think it was
from from this series where Boris was referred to as
the Lebron stopper James. Just for perspective, can you describe
bords Dial in his game? Just just for folks said
you didn't necessarily watch him, Well, Barksdal is a mixture
of a couple of players. He's like a point guard
(40:37):
and a power forward body. Um. He has good ball
helening skills, but not great ball halening skills where you
can steal it from him. But he's a very very
smart player. He knows how to use his body. Imagine
Charles Barkley, you know, on a smaller level, you know,
that's how bars Dall is. I mean, he plays smart
like Charles. He knows how to use his body. But y'all,
(41:00):
you know, it's weird that we sit here calling Lebron
style with Lebron at game four's it's it's crazy. It's like,
I'll be honest with you, insert whatever player's name and
stop her. It probably never really was the case if
we're if we're being honest, let me just say that
someone ever said, hey, Roberto is a blank, blank stopper.
(41:21):
I'm like, dude, don't do that, because once you say that,
the guy's eyes light up. Said, I'm coming at you.
So you know, if anybody ever says, hey, I'm a stopper,
don't do that. I'm like, negate that right now. Don't
set you off a failure. I understand. I can. I
appreciate it, all right, So let's go ahead, and let's
go ahead and transition to Miami side of things, because
this was absolutely a must win game for Miami. If
(41:42):
you go to look, if you go down three one,
if you go down three one against the Spurs, you know,
like you in San Antonio, you can pretty much say
good night. But for me, it appeared to be that,
you know, Miami's defensive intensity. It seemed like that was
a difference in the second half cross court that you know,
the way it or something my way, you know, the
Big three, they kind of reminded themselves of that they're
the Big three. You know. Lebron was aggressive from the outset,
(42:03):
you know, you know, this was actually the first game
where he broke twenty plus points, you know in the series.
You know, Wade was also fantastic throughout. He had thirty
two sixty six deals, six boards, four assists, and particularly helped,
you know, kind of seal the deal in the fourth.
But I want to talk about Chris Bosh in particularly
because Boss he defended incredibly well and he produced twenty
and thirteen and two just and and two blocks. Just
kind of quietly Parker Spratt, Floor Hill, what the right
(42:26):
hand rejected by Bo? Can you speak to the I
guess the sacrifice that it that it took from a
player with the skill and the and the ability of
Chris Bosh to play that role and play it so well. Yeah,
you know, Chris Bosh, you know, with thirteen, twelve and
twelve and in the previous three games. And you look
at this game, but I'm not even gonna credit Chris Bosh.
(42:47):
I'm gonna credit you know, supposed to for making a change.
He started Mike Miller that game, which kind of opened
the floor for Bosh to move to that five position.
Now Boss has more room to operate. You know, he
goes and has twenty points. It's it's weird that this
dude has twenty points in the finals and we're not
talking about it because Lebron had thirty three, Dwayne Waite
(43:08):
he had thirty two. So Chris Boss a little twenties
seems like nothing, but it was big for him to
you know, put Tim duncan make him play defensive because
we know Tim is a great defender, but sometimes if
you go at a defender who's also who is also
a good office, but it can kind of wear them down.
And with Bosh on the scene, being able to go
at Tim duncan make some moves, knocked down some shots.
(43:31):
It created a lot of pressure on the Spurs defense
and so now offensively, you know, you look at him,
a hundred nine points the most they've scored so far
in this series. So it was it was. It worked
out great for the for the heat, and I think
you have to create a sposter for recognizing that, hey,
I need to get Bosh involved putting in the shooter
to spread the floor and you know, to you know,
to that point, you know, maybe another adjustment that you
(43:53):
know that that I kind of saw trending through over
the course of the series. Ray Allen plays the most
minutes that he's played so far, you know, throughout the
series with thirty you know is over thirty three. You know,
it contributes fourteen points off the bench. And while the
numbers don't jump off the page, can you speak to
what it's crazy that we we're just kind of now,
you know, talking about reality. Can you speak to what
you know, his presence, you know that you're being a
bona fide weapon. You know what that does to a
(44:14):
team like Miami. You think about really is one of
the greatest three points shooters ever played his game. And
with your presence on the floor, it's gonna put the
fear and a lot of defenders because you're not gonna
take three steps away from that guy. So the paint
is going to open up a little more, so you're
gonna be closer to reality than you will. Defense is
your schemes is changing when you want to get a
foot in the paint. So now you out there and
(44:36):
making sure reality doesn't get those easy and wide open threes.
But he still has fourteen points, and and and and
For me, sometimes just being a fear factor is enough
to change up a defensive scheme. Live to play another day.
You know Game five is gonna be a big one.
We have to do it again. That's the three man.
(44:56):
We got an opportunity to take a lead on Sunday.
We gotta we gotta be ready for it. So it's
the opportunity that we need to chaerish. All right, Rob,
let's wrap it up here. As you mentioned, this series
has been fantastic, but in part two, I cannot wait.
We've got one of the greatest shots in finals history.
Welcome to the NBA Finals. Filed with Robert Ori and
Jabari Davis. I'm Robert Ori is seven time NBA champ,
and I'm happy to be here with Jabari. I gotta
be honest with you. It still blows my mind, you know,
growing up an NBA fan in the Greater Los Angeles era,
during the showtime era. You know, to be exact, you know,
I've had a charmed existence and now look I'm covering
you know, I covered the league for a decade. I
(00:24):
had stopped at USA Today, Basketball Insiders and whatnot, and
now I'm talking to Robert freaking or about the Finals.
I gotta be honest with your life is pretty good.
His life is great for me. Man. To be here
with you, Jabari, I've seen you across the years and
to interact with you now. To be doing this podcast
with you, was gonna be fan tax to rehash all
the great NBA finals. I think I was a part
of a couple of me but we'll see the arts.
(00:51):
But it's just a great feeling to be here. Man.
It's gonna be a great podcast, and I'm so ready
to get the inside scoop into what goes on in
each little series each Finals and trying to get some
players on here to talk about those moments that happened.
Look at you be modest over there. Oh yeah, you
had a couple of moments. Yeah yeah, maybe one or
two to Rob's point. Each week we'll be deep diving
(01:22):
into one of the greatest NBA Finals series of all time,
and we'll examine the moments of storylines that made NBA
his Firelock James Ron James with the rejection. The first
series that we'll be discussing will be NBA Finals, which
featured the Big Three Miami Heat versus the Spurs team
that was starting in the transition basically from their tim
Tony in Manu Era. Yeah, you know what, the Big Three,
(01:45):
the new Big Three versus the old Big Three, the
Big Three of San Antonio who had mono genobody coming
off the bench. This series was incredible, man, it went
back and forth, and I can't wait to get into
it and talk about the good, the bad. And So
we have the Miami Heat. The previous year they beat
the thunder the obviously to win the title. We have
(02:06):
a celebration tonight. Congratulations to the NBA champion Miami Heat.
This season they went sixty six and sixteen UH and
they finished first in the Southeast Division. Rob This team
took a trip to the Great Wall of China ahead
of the season, and coach Bolster he spoke directly to
the team building that came as a result of that trip.
(02:26):
The most beneficial thing is taking a trip like this
as a team halfway across the world, experiencing a new culture,
spending so much time around each other away from the
basketball court, experiencing new things together, sightseeing together. That helps
the team bonding and building. I think some of these
experiences will remember for the rest of our lives, even
(02:47):
coming off the title the previous season. Can you speak
to what a team trip or event or things of
that nature can do for a squad in terms of camaraderie.
But the camaraderie comes together because you get a time
to talk to each other and people do understand esk
mere important than you know sometimes playing together because you
can get on the same page when you're sitting there
having a conversation where I think I think it's with
a thirteen hours sixteen hours flight to China, so you
(03:09):
have a lot of time to interact with one another,
and so you're sitting there say yo, man, this is
what I like to do, because a lot of times
coaches put players in situation because they think that's best
foot a player. When a player like, no, I really
don't like that, but sometimes they don't, you know, speak
up on it and think about it. You're sitting there
with Dwayne Way, Lebron James, Tony, Parker Mount and Jenova.
Tim dun't say I like to come off a screen
(03:29):
this way. You know, when I drive right, I'm looking
for you to do this when I go left. You know,
so many different aspects of the game that people don't
think about because you got to know what one side
of the game just like you know the other side
of the game. And when you're able to talk about
it and come together, you can become one and win
a championship. This was also a season where they had
a four and seven stretch, you know, before going into
(03:51):
what was a historic franchise run. The Strea survives for
as I'm interested from the player's perspective, you know, and
you're from inside the locker room because you see it
on social media. You see nerds like me, you know,
we're going nuts and going crazy. You know you know
that the sky has fallen. Well, anytime a super team
(04:12):
has a as a rough stretch, what's the tone with
the team during these types of stretches. I'm wondering do
players actually feel that level of scrutiny. Oh, players feel
scrutiny because you have expectations. And when you have a
huge expectation because as a player, you know, going into
a season, you look around that locker room like, okay,
we got a championship quality team, or you can look
(04:32):
around the locker room like, man, we can add another
piece and we might have a championships quality team. Those
are the type of things that you know as a
player because reality sets in. And I think when you
have that scrutiny, when you know you have the talent,
especially when you have a big three and that's what
everybody's talking about, it can weigh on you. And sometimes
you have that love because not because if you're not
(04:52):
playing good, because you put so much pressure on yourself
to perform, that those performances aren't up to part. And
that's what it boils down onto, not putting that pressure
on you doing what you do best, going out there
and saying, hey, this is what we need to do
to improve ourselves, and don't put pressure on just play
the game, because the game, at the end of the
day is easy. You pass, you dribble, you shoot. You
(05:13):
just gotta do it at a high level. Fair enough,
fair enough, and needless to say, they didn't panic. They
ended up going like I said on a story run,
as the game started to mound up more and more,
the games started to become more playoff games and teams
want to break your streak. They have one there twenty
second to the secutive game. They are tied with the
Ocean on the O eight Rockets for the second best
(05:35):
winning streak in NBA history. Once we got to twenty three,
he was like, man, we don't need ten games away
from the record. Let's go for it. You know, you
started hearing to the world history and as a competitor
and as a team to be a part of history
books and trying to get the thirty four or something
that we wanted to do. Five was over the last
(05:56):
forty eight nights, thirty three blocks. No doubt, we're gonna
break that record for the first time I mentioned in
the streak. Find the guys now. We took that moment
to acknowledge each other on that that experience, and then
that was that. Of course you would like to broke
the record, but I mean, twenty seven games in a row,
that's great game win streak. Do you remember that streak? Together?
(06:18):
We won't go off tangent. You know too much, and
and I can I can already feel you know, super producer,
you know Peters, you know Peter's eyes looking at me
right now. But do you remember that streaking? What it
felt like? And did you think that they had a
chance to get to thirty three? You know what? I
was looking at that and everybody was saying, Okay, can
they catch the Lakers streak? And I'm sitting back saying,
they got Lebron James, they got Bosh and Dwayne Wade,
(06:40):
these guys are playing really good, and they got another
Hall of Famer on their bench into what and uh real,
And so I was like, it's possible. But the thing
about streaks, though, everybody want to be that streak in there,
and so that bulls I got bigger and bigger and bigger.
So at the end of the day, I looked at
this gathers are like, no, They're not gonna do it.
They're gonna get to about twenty eight, and then that
(07:01):
you know they'll lose it. But it's hard to keep
a streaking up like that because you have to keep
the mental there. Think about the Bulls had to do it,
the Lakers had to do it. There's so many teams
that had these historic streets, and it's taxing mentally because
you've got to be on point each and every night
and everybody's gunning for you. Man, I can't even imagine
what that feels like. But let's keep it going talking,
and let's go ahead and break down the Spurs their
(07:22):
path to the finals. They the previous year they lost
in the conference finals. So, okay, see this season, you know,
this particular season, they went fifty eight and twenty four.
Guess what, they finished first in the Southwest Division. They
were pretty steady. You know, they were pretty steady throughout
the year. So what's new when it comes to the
Spurs man? What can you say that? That's the Spurs man,
that's the Spurs. They're consistent each and every year, and
(07:43):
they had a lot to do. It started off with
David Robinson and they kind of rolled over to Tim
Duncan and then Tim held the ship afloat for seventeen
eighteen years. And that's the thing. And you get guys
like Tony Parker, and that's and we watched Tony Parker.
I don't people understand how good Tony Parker was. Think
about this. This is a point guard. He led the
(08:04):
league and scoring multiple times points in the paint as
a point guard scoring points in the paint, So that
lets you know his toughness. And he's not afraid to
get into paint and mixed up with the big guys.
Because think about you got guys like Shock, you know,
like Tim, you got Dwight, how you got these beasts
in the paint ibaka that will put you on your butt.
But Tony was not afraid to go there and score points.
(08:24):
So that's what you have to look at. And then
you haven't Genobley probably one of the best six man
ever to play this game, you know, even though he
was in his level season at the time of this
championship run, and he was, you know, not Genoboli, you know,
three or four years ago, but he was still that
crafty guy. And you had a young guy on the
rise by the name of Kauai Leonard in his second year.
So you had a lot of you know, things going
on in that series. But each team was had a
(08:47):
big three that you could depend on. So it was
it was one of those roles that each team said, Hey,
you know what, it's not gonna be the big three,
It's gonna be what we all all like to call
the others. That's means bitch players and the role players.
It's funny. I have a note about the others coming
up here. Of course you know you're giving them. I'm
talking to you about it. I was I was going
(09:07):
to reference that. But the last bit that I have,
the last bit that I have on San Antonio that
this team, of course, you know, as I said, you know,
they're the model of consistency. It was a team that
only lost back to back games three times throughout the season,
and the only time they lost the restrate was down
the stretch when Pop wasn't playing guys in preparation for
the you know, for the postseason. But let me ask
you this, when it comes to Pop in that type
of consistency of you know, of course, having generational talent,
(09:30):
you know that's always going to be important, but you
know that, you know, we've seen it that doesn't necessarily
guarantee you the types of success that we've seen from him.
Is it a leadership thing? Is it attention to detail?
Is a combination of things. I think the key point
you said that is attention to detail and what and
the thing that Pop does. He just doesn't throw talent
on a team. You think about it, you have to
(09:51):
have the right pieces in this machine to make it work,
and each cog has a role to do. If you
look at the Spurs team that had a great point guard,
they had an extraordinary two guarden, Danny Green who could
shoot threes, who could be swapped out with an athletic
guy with Mino Janova. Then you had Kawhi Lennard who
would go to three, and then you had of course
Tim and Thiago Splinter, and you had a traditional team
(10:14):
where each person's role was defined. There was no like, Okay,
let me put this guy in. What will he do?
Will he be the X factor? And that's how san
Antonio system has been since Pop has been that each
person has a defined role and that's what makes them
so good. And plus you look at this team and
they always glide by and you never think they're gonna
be that good because they're not flashy. They don't have
(10:37):
anybody who's gonna come out and you know, do crazy
dunks on people. You know, But next thing, you know,
you look at the statue sheets and you look at
the winnings. They right there every time because they do
things on a consistent basis and they have the right
pieces that fit and Pop manages everything to a perfection. Rob.
You know, I can't you know, I can't avoid the question.
(10:59):
You played for Pope, you played for Rudy t you
play for you know, Phil Jackson. And now of course
there's different ways you know, to the mountaintop, but how
can you can you speak to the different you know,
they're different approaches. You know this is amazing. Um, when
you upper echelon coach and you win in championships, you
pretty much had the same philosophy and Pop feel and
(11:20):
Rudy they all emphasized defense, they all emphasized working together
as team. You know, you're gonna have the guys on
the team of the big dogs. But he makes sure
those big dogs understand that the little dogs are just
as a poigno and everybody is the same. Because if
if everybody is on one page, we're gonna win a championship.
And Pop was great about putting the pieces together, um,
(11:41):
making sure you can massage the egos the right way,
because we know all of us athletes, we have egos.
We all think we're the best thing they ever step
on the court. But you gotta understand that there's are
people that their teammates of yours are a little bit better.
You're doing this, and you're a little bit better doing
things that they aren't doing. So I think Pop was
great at adding pieces at the right time, you know,
to saying, Okay, Tony, you need to back up. You know,
(12:02):
my new Jenova, you need to come off the bench.
Tim You know, we don't need to go to you
as much until you have the misfast and the advantages.
And Pop always understood the intricacies of the game and
how to manipulate it and make it work in his favor.
That's really amazing, And it's funny. It's not that I
expected them to have completely opposing you know, styles, but
you know, I guess it makes sense. You know, you're
(12:24):
you're you're only going to be successful at this level.
You know, like if there are certain commonalities and they're
the all hands on deck. You know, mindset, I can
I can certainly appreciate from pop and from championship level coaches.
All right, on that note, I don't mean to cut you.
Let's go ahead and take a quick break right there.
But when we come back, let's jump into the series. Yes,
the series. I'm ready for this. All right, welcome back
(12:50):
to the NBA Finals file here with Robert Ory and
Jabari Davis's always good. It's gonna it's gonna feel good
saying that for a while. I's gonna be honest with you,
all right, So for the sake of to listen, mass
at NBA Final Files with Jabari Davis and Robert Ory.
Oh wait, Rob, you're giving me top billing. I don't.
I don't know. I don't know. I'm gonna feel about that. Yes,
I gotta give you top billing. You really don't, but
(13:13):
I'll take it. I'll absolutely You know, you just started
and I come up the bench. You know that's what
I used to do. Do know? I appreciate the sentiment. Now,
for the for the sake of the listeners, I'll quickly
run through the path that each team took to get
to the finals. For the heat in the conference finals,
Eastern Conference Finals. They beat the Pacers for three. Never
take this for granted, going on this ride to the
(13:33):
next round and these next four, that's whatever it takes
for the Spurs. They beat the Grizzlies, they swept them. Four. Oh.
San Antonio sweeps the grizz The Spurs are headed to
the NBA Finals. Over the course of the conversation, we'll
get into the coaching matchup, so we won't, you know,
do that here, but let's go ahead and break down
(13:55):
Game one if you don't mind. Sure, you know, Game
one was one of those fillers. When you have two
teams like this, they have a big three, as we mentioned,
they usually come out and try to fill each other out.
So usually a low scoring game, and and they came out,
you know, testing each other, seeing how you're gonna play defensively,
and that's what good teams do. You know, we don't
come out with our best plays right off the bat
(14:17):
because we save a little bit, because think about it,
it's gonna be a long series. It's not just one
game and then we move on to the next team.
It's gonna be a seven game series. So you have to,
you know, hide some things that are not working, or
you try to find out what you know, who's playing well.
And that's what this series is gonna boil down to
who's playing well and who's not. Yeah, and when you
look at the action for game one, you know, it
(14:38):
was like you know, to your point, it was an
absolute defensive battle throughout, you know, especially down the stretch,
which we'll get to. You know, Duncan in particular, he
got off to a slow offensive start, but he winds
up grinding out, you know, twenty and fourteen to get
it into dunking out to the easy layout, dunking and
scored eight of the last ten for San Antonio Lebron.
You know, comes through with the second straight final striple double.
James what the first. That's not a bad way to start,
(15:02):
you know. Kauai, you know, as you mentioned earlier, he
wasn't necessarily the star of the team at this at
this point they were still transitioning. He puts up a
meager ten and ten, but he clearly impacts the game
in multiple ways. And to the point that you were
just you know, speaking on can you talk about the
difference between face of the team over the course of
a regular season as opposed to matching up in a
series like this one, when you know, attention to detail
is seemingly higher. Yeah, the good teams know who they're
(15:24):
gonna be preparing for in the finals. Are doing the
you know, the playoffs because you hold back plays, you
don't play a certain defense you might try, like in
the first quarter of the first games. Okay, if we
run into this team again, we're gonna try this matchup.
Oh it worked, so we're gonna move it. And you
say it that way, the team won't prepare for it
when you get ready for the series. And I think
(15:45):
that's what Pop love to do. He had he had
a bunch of plays that he only ran in the playoffs.
He'll try him like once or twice, you know, during
the regular season. But I noticed from playing for Pop,
so I knew this part. But when you've got guys
like Kauai that are X factors, you know, Kauai is
on in his second year, people still trying to figure
him out. He was a heck of defensive player, and
he was loving to match up with Lebron Love the
(16:05):
match up with Duane Wade because he was trying to
make his name at this point. In time as been
a two way player as a termin they'd like to use.
So it was, it was. It was a great matchup
in the first game, you know, Lebron trying to figure
out how to go up against crafty model Guenoboli and
Rayality coming off the bench. It was if you think
about this, this game had a lot of future Hall
of famers, all right. So I'm not trying to get
(16:28):
you in trouble with Pops, So you know, feel free
to say, you know, the next question if you know,
if you don't necessarily want to answer this. But I
always felt from the outside looking in that there was
pretty much you know, strategy and gamesmanship going on over
the course of the regular season and all throughout with
him in terms of how he pretty much you know,
selected Okay, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna run a
lot of sets you know in big matchups, and you
guys that we might potentially see in the postseason, especially
(16:50):
in the finals, and even even as far as sitting
certain players you know in big matchups. Was that part
of it or was it really just a matter of
Pop's gonna do what Pop does. Hey, it's not checking
his chest when it comes to Pop, you know, he's
gonna try to play the mind game. Like I said,
He's gonna do different things and throw different matchups out there.
You know, you've got guys like you know, Thiago spinners,
So we're gonna use a brute force in there, and
(17:12):
then we're gonna put tim at before. We're gonna go
big and they can go small. That's a great thing
about Pop when he had his lineups as he wanted them,
he can go big, he'd go small. He can do
whatever he needed to do because if you think about
the history of him, he had pieces. He could rotate
one to two, three, three, four, four or five. He
could just move guys over to mix space for other guys.
And that's how he is. He he he'll put a
(17:33):
play in, run it, and now he might not player work,
and he might not run that player again until the
end of the game because he's like, oh, it worked
to a perfection like that. Let's say, even though he
could score on it again and again during the course
of the game, he will hold it because just in
case we need to play down the stretch where it's
a guaranteed bucket, we'll hold it to them like you
(17:54):
said Chest, not checkers, And I can certainly appreciate that.
All right, Rob, So there's two fifteen left in again,
and the spurs are up for At this point, everyone's
locked in and almost overplaying on anyone cutting. Duncan flashes
across the lane and essentially creates the space for a
cross court pass where man who winds up finding Danny
on the wing, and Danny hits a huge three to
put them up seven. Is that a play that Pops
(18:16):
sets up that way? Is it? Is it more? Is
it a reading react type situation? Because it absolutely worked
a perfection When you look back at this play, if
I can remember correctly, I think this play is called
dive role. As one of Pop's favorite players, he likes
to run where Tim says to pick and roll and
you dive, and the purpose of Tim divings to try
to draw that defense in. And if you watched the play,
(18:39):
you had an over the top pass by Manu, and
Manu is an excellent passer. But when Mike Miller bites
on that, Danny Green sees this and moves into the
line of site for Mano, you don't believe that Danny
Greens lots of three. That's cut Danny Green frock time
Town his fourth three pointer of the game, and this
equals the law right just sleep for san Antonio and
(19:01):
Mino rips it across court to take that pass from
Mino for three, and that's one of the pop's favorite plays,
because what are you gonna do? Give Tim the over
the top, you're gonna give up the three, And Mike
Miller had to make a choice there and he chose wrong.
I mean, you know, especially with with with the way
basketball was played at that at that point and we
were with the focus I can see especially you got
Tim Duncan rolling it as hard as he was. I
(19:23):
understand making that adjustment, but you know it came back
to buy them into behind. Yeah, you know you're thinking
about it. Tim was always one of the you know
up in years and everybody thinks does he still has it?
Apparently he does, because he was taking him to the
whole had twenty points him and TP were going to work.
TV had twenty one and for Danny Green to sit back,
I think he said a record in this series for
(19:44):
the number threes he made. But he was shooting extremely
well in that first game and he knocked down that
three to uh put us, you know, kind of cement
a moment where hey, you know what, we're gonna be
up and we're gonna win this series. You're exactly right
about him setting that record. I had that, you know,
noted later on, you know at the time, you know
he said it for twenty five steph eventually of course
(20:04):
hanging back there later on with but you know, which
is to be expected. But you know, shout out to
Danny Green for that. Danny Green was when those sharp
shooters that you know, you didn't talk about for a
while until you're like, wow, did he just knocked down
three threes on us? We got to cover him. He
was that quiet assassin from three all right, rob. So
we get down to the final, you know, the final play,
the shot clock is running out. We got prime Lebron
(20:27):
in his peak, in his figure, the peak of his
physical powers, matched up against you know, matched up against
Tony Parker in the corner. You know, Tony Parker at
one point falls down the one knee. He winds up
getting back up spinning. You know she she you nailing
a bank shot, You'll off the glass. You're right in
his face. I nearly lost it. Still juggling talk to
(20:48):
her to to shoot, just gets it off the time
and he facts to them what a shot from Parker
gets off his fate and put Santa Tonio up four.
Now they'll look you to make sure that Parker got
it off before the shot clock expired. It was a
crazy play. I thought I lost the ball like three
or four times and uh then work out like I
(21:10):
wanted to. But you know, at the end, I was
just trying to get a shot up and felt good
when they left my hand, and h I was happy
I went in. Let me ask you this in that moment,
if you're the Spurs, how are you feeling? You know,
you went into Miami. You stole Game one in great
fashion in that manner. First of all, it me you
got six two versus six nine, and the six two
(21:31):
wins that battle. That's a lot. That's a big confidence builder.
And you know, I'm not it's not like Tony needed
the confidence building. But sometimes when you can go into
someone's arena and still one, you've done your job. They
still Game one, which is most pivotal game in the
series because now you gotta put them against the world.
But for Tony to do his Curly Neil impression. For
(21:53):
people who don't know who Curly Neil is, he was
a Harlem globe trotter. He was on one knee, spins
and knocks down the shot and the still Game one
in Miami was perfect for the Spurs. It was a
perfect scenario because Spurs is a type of team that
doesn't lose at home, and they were on the perfect
path now to win this series because they stole one
in Miami's building, Rob, what about the flip side of that?
(22:15):
You're Miami, you know that, you know historically, you know
Lebron has been able to lose the first game of
the series and still come back and win. Now you're
at home, you know, you know eventually you're gonna have
to go on the road to San Antonio. But you're
at home and you know that you can't go down
O two. Well, Uh, that's pretty clear. Uh, there are
plays to be made, UM, and our offensive inefficiency really
(22:36):
going down the stretch most of the fourth quarter, UM
probably hurt us more than anything. So we gotta gather
ourselves and get ready for Game two. Yeah, you definitely
can't go to O two because Spurs don't lose at home.
And for Miami, they have to have their mind say, hey,
you know what, it's cool. They came in, they won
game one. You know what, let's protect our home court.
(22:57):
Let's go out and win game two. In order to
win this series anywhere, we have to go on the
road and win. So we're gonna win at home and
go in San Antonio and get one way back where
we want to be. And I think that's the mindset.
And when you look at this team that the Heat had,
they are a bunch of champions. They are a bunch
of guys who's been there. They just won a championship.
So there's like, you know what this is. This isn't
a place we haven't been. So let's go out and
play hard. Because when I back so against the wall,
(23:19):
that's when we're most comfortable. And if you look at
the way they're gonna come out in game two, that's
how I played out to be an interesting note you
know that I noticed here from the ESPN recap on
this game, it stated that many of the Miami fans
left the building during the officials review on Parker's last shot,
and it actually winds up being a bit of foreshadowing
for the rest of the series. Yeah, you know, fans
(23:39):
have a tendency when they think their team has lost
to leave the building. I've been a part of a
couple of games in my career where fans left the
next thing. You know, that's a man, I can't believe
y'all lost. Agains. No, we won the game, but you
were down. There is no we won that game. So
never leave the builder until the buzzer goes off. You know,
they have that saying, you know, don't leave until you
know the ladies things. But you know, Tony Parker is
a b when it comes and playing one on one basketball.
(24:02):
He's so quick. At one point in time, I think
he was it was the quickest player in basketball from
winning the floor to the other. And then of course
when you got a main anchor in the stable like
Tim Duncan to anchor your team defensively, you can you
can try all other things because you think about that team.
We always talk about offense, but if you look at
that team, though, everybody on that starting lineup can play
(24:25):
defense on both teams you have. San Antonio had a
great defensive team Miami. He had a great deference. You know,
you don't talk about the defense because you've got guys
like Jenobeh Lebron who can excite you with the offensive plays.
But these two teams were very defensive minded and could
stop you at any point. Yeah. To that point, if
I'm not mistaken, the Spurs were third overall the defensive
efficiency on the year. Uh the heat you know. To
(24:47):
that point again, you know, they were seventh of defensive efficency.
So I guess coming in we absolutely should have known
it was gonna be this type of battle and get
in Game one absolutely did not disappoint. Yeah, because sometimes
you're gonna have these games where guys who play defense
you might have other game, but they're like, I thought
this was a defensive team. Um, they came out scoring.
I thought the team could stop them, but they let
them score. Hey, that's a great thing about NBA basketball.
(25:08):
Each and every night is something different. And you watch
these teams and you watch them play, watch them play hard,
and they figured each other out because every like I said,
every game, there's gonna be some moments where you go, uh,
I can do use this against them in the next game.
And that's what great teams do and great coaches can
figure it out. Because I don't know if you ever
watch coaches on the sideline and they'll reach back behind
(25:31):
the bench until their assistant coach is something that's them saying,
mark that playdown for us to use it later. Nice. Nice, Okay,
I have seen that take place, and I always kind
of wonder what the exchange was, But okay, that's good
to know. It's either that or mark that play down
the show. Hey, we need to stop this defensive because
they just killed us on his play. Oh you can say,
(25:51):
we're gonna mark this down because he messed up on
his play and we need to show him that he
keeps doing this and we need to find a way
to solve that problem. All a part of the strategy. Okay,
not as difficult game too, to the point that you
(26:12):
were just making Lebron and you know, and Boss and
has them to a lesser extent. You know, they did
a really good job of sort of building a wall defensively,
you know, making Tim's life at least difficult. Uh. The
Guards basically did the same on Toni, Duncan, and Parker.
They wound up combining eight for twenty seven from the floor.
While Danny Green was actually the one that led the
spursion scoring three. Danny Great, that's at three threes, and
(26:34):
we're gonna, I feel like we're gonna talk about Danny
Green a lot to see, you know, throughout this series.
But he went five for He went five for five
from Deepen in this game. Yeah, you know, Danny Green
came out shooting the ball extremely well, and that's what
makes the game really easy for guys like Tim Duncan
and Tony Parker because it stretches the floor. But in
this case, you know, Tim and Tonio, like you said,
they didn't have the Stella game if they had in
game one, Game one campaing for forty one points. Game two,
(26:58):
they only had what winning one points together. So it's
hard to try to keep that leveling the playoffs because
you've got the other teams saying, okay, what heard us
last game, Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, So they kind of
shut that down. And this series really just boils down
to what Big Three plays the best consistently throughout games,
(27:18):
because if you can get around, that is, if the
Big Three can get around at twenty point mark, they
usually win the game. I mean I said get around
in the twenty point part. I mean each player gets
around the twenty point mark, not as a whole, So
I messed that up. Sorry, no, no, no no worries. I
I knew what you meant before you before the benefit
of the listeners. I appreciate that clarification. And in this game,
you know, looking at some of the notes again, you
(27:40):
know Kauais matches up directly with Lebron. I actually watched
all of this game throughout, not just not you know,
not just eclipse of Highline. You know, he's he's matched
up directly with Lebron a lot, you know, and it's
crazy to think that like he did. I personally think
he did a fantastic job, even though Lebron still manages
the impact the game and every fasciating fans raised their
noise John and screamed by James Lebron to the basket lapter,
(28:03):
Jeames on the drive. You at seventeen points, your eight rebounds,
seven assists, three steals, three blocks. I just want to
try to make some plays and try to help our team. Uh.
I was the last line of defense, and and you know,
just being on both sides of the floor, being able
to make an impactage what it's all about. Off the
San Antonio Game three won one. Can you talk to like, basically,
(28:27):
what is it like when you're facing greatness like that?
The first thing you're gonna this is one where you're
gonna learn help. You gotta ask for help. You can't
be afraid to ask for help too. Because they are
great defensive players. But when I'm trying to go out
and play a great offensive player, I'm gonna need help
because I got to force them to a point where
I'm gonna have to need help. And then think about
(28:48):
the San Antonio Spurns. They have always been a great,
great help defensive team because you have someone like Tim
Duncan who could come over wall it off a block
of shot. You've got guys like my Genobli and and
we we know we talked about Kauai, but Dannick Green
was exceptional player two on the defensive end. So they
had a lot of guys that could switch, they could help,
(29:12):
that could rotate, and so this first team, that's what
they lived on. Hey, they lived on rotating. But when
you get into a rotation situation like that, it's gonna
be up to the others, as we mentioned earlier, to
knock down shots. And I think Ray Allen had third team,
James will drive it inside off to the left wing.
It's Alan for three, wide open three can Allan from Downtown,
(29:33):
you know, when you got him can come off the
bench and give you points. And you've got Mike Miller
who was key to knock down three stretching the floor.
He had nine points stole by James down. So when
you got those others, those guys coming off the bench
to stretch the floor, it makes it hard defensively for
the other team. Rob It's almost like we've been doing
this together for years and this isn't our very first
(29:54):
episode because this is that's exactly where I was going
with it. I want to talk a little bit about
the others. So this is the thing when it when
it comes to the all time great or even you
know they do the greats, right, I almost feel like
you can you can chalk them up for whatever about
whatever their averages are, maybe you know, maybe a little
bit more, but I I personally feel, especially in the finals,
(30:14):
oftentimes it's the others working around the fringes that make
the difference. So to your point, you know, you know
Danny Green, he plays a pivotal role for the for
the Spurs in this theories throughout this series, Ray Allen,
You're like, exactly, he went three for five for Deep
in this game, and that was on the heels at
three for four for Deep in game one. But Mario Chalmers,
he actually led the heating scoring for this game, and
he was pivotal with huge buckets in the second half.
(30:35):
Shomers end of the lane, push shot gout it unfound
at a rio to the line for another round one.
We gets a screen and spluttered out, finds Tiago inside
and he had it. Not the way by Miller Chalmers
across the line of change. Can you speak to that
in particular, the way that the other players actually impact
a big series like this, I think when each player,
(30:57):
When I look at Mario Chalmers, I think he took
pride in the where he played because he's going up
against one of the best point guards to play this
game in Tony Park, and every guy wants to be noticed,
and what better way to notice be noticed in them
on the biggest stage the NBA Finals. And if you
watched how Charmers played, Tony played him tough defensively, but hey,
like I said earlier, offense sometimes beats better defense. And
(31:19):
then on the flip side of that, Charmers was like
he didn't back down. He went at Tony two. You
know in that game he had nineteen points. He was
being aggressive, he was knocking nine shots. And that's what
it has to be. You can't you can have no fear.
You know that a lot of people says have no
fear when in the NBA Finals, and you know, you
gotta matchup that you can exploit. You can't sit back
and say, Okay, I'm gonna let the moment Conny. Sometimes
(31:42):
you gotta go out and take that moment. And Mario
Chalmers was a guy in this series. Every time he
had a moment, he took it. I definitely appreciate someone
stepping up big in the moment. Alright, time for another
break as things are heating up in this series, and
when we come back, we'll dive into games three and four.
(32:05):
How import does this game? Thirty five times in NBA
history of the Finals have been tied at a game
of piece. In thirty of those instances, the winner of
Game three went on to become the champion. All right,
let's go ahead and get into Game three, which was
you know, the finals blowout. You don't see that all
that often, you know, you used to see it back
in the day. You know, you in thinking about like,
(32:25):
you know, the Lakers back in the day with the
Boston massacre and whatnot. If you don't see too many
you know, actual like legitimate bona fide blowouts. This was
a one thirteen seventy seven Spurs win, you know that
in their first game back in San Antonio. And you
know what I've spoke about him earlier, We're gonna talk
about him here now. Danny Green actually leads the team
in scoring once again. He made he had twenty seven points.
(32:45):
He made a record seven threes. He was seven for nine,
and meanwhile the team was sixteen for thirty two. You
know what you're gonna get once again, like out of
duncan you at least you expect, you know, to know
what you're gonna get. You know what you're pretty much
going to get out of you know, like out of
tim and you know in mining like if he gets
it going. But what does it mean when a guy
like Danny Green is hitting like this? Danny Green was phenomenal. Um,
(33:08):
when you got a guy that can shoot three is
at a clip like he can, it helps the team
out greatly. And when you got a guy like Tony
who only had I think six points in this game,
and Tim only had twelve. When you got Danny Green,
who I know from playing for Pop probably didn't get
that many plays ran for him, but he's able to
knock down shots like this and do his thing is incredible.
So when you've got guys that can come out and
(33:30):
play hard and make it easier for the Big Three,
like Danna Green, and let's not forget about Gary Neil
because he had twenty four points in that game, also
carry a show. So when you got guys like that
are able to score at a clip, it makes it
easier for the bigs. The first half this game was
(33:50):
relatively close. It was fifty It was fifty to forty
four at the half, but the Spurs just poured it on.
In the second half. They out They actually outscored Miami
sixty three to thirty three. And the second Lebron and
the Wade, you know, they combined to go eighteen forty
six from the floor. You know, outside of Mike Miller
who went five for five from deep, nobody else even
reach double digits. Yeah, it was. It was difficult game
for the Heat thinking about Mario Chamans who had been
(34:12):
talking about in previous games played well zero points. Udonis
has them zero points, and so we always talk about
the others. When those others don't put any points on
the boys, it's kind of difficult for you to win.
And with Lebron only scoring fifteen is really gonna be difficult.
The Spurs wind up, you know, dominating the rebound battle
fifty two to thirty six, and they you know, and
they tied on twenty nine. Assist to go with it.
(34:33):
Let me talk. Let's talk about Pop. You talk, You
played for him. You know, we have to take advantage
of this. You know, I mentioned that, I mentioned that
sixty sixty three to thirty three run a moment ago.
Do you feel like it's it was just a matter
of adjustments for Pop or is there you know, anything
to the idea that sometimes a team will just get hot,
and you know the other team either doesn't master the
intensity or simply can't get it going. I think when
(34:55):
watching this game, san Antonio played so well at home.
Their fans are fantastic, and when you get home for
that first game of the finals, the energy is so
electric that it pushes you through a lot of moments.
It gives you that that that that ultimate high and
that ultimate of drilling, that you can do things that
(35:15):
you don't normally do. And you look at this game,
Danny Green twenty seven, Gary Neal Kauai four team. These
guys we're gonna talk about the Big three for Spurs.
These guys stepped up big because they're in the first
finals in front of their home crowd. So that had
a lot to do with it. And it's not just
you know, you know, the fact that he didn't play
(35:36):
that well and then guard that well. It's a little
bit of everything, but the most part was it comes
down to home cooking in this game for me in
my eyes, you know, Pop made their adjustments, but the fans,
with the energy and the emotions that the players had,
took him over the top. Speaking of home cooking, you
personally can relate to Danny Green, at least I feel
you can. You know, Danny goes off. Danny goes off
(35:57):
in this game. You know, you know, as we mentioned
in a couple of time, you went seven for nine
for Deep Wait way off. Let's talk about a fut
Slicks get to the green. That's a friend. Danny Green
again from downtown. Is it a matter of Pop looking
to get him more involved, get him activated? Is it
simply or is it more of you take with the
(36:19):
defensive games and he just got you know, he just
got it going. I think it is. It boils down
to what the defense gives you. Because Tony, Tim and
Manu have been killing in the paint. So what do
coaches do. We're gonna stop the points in the paint.
So now you're packing in defensively. Now the Spurs or
a team that shares the basketball extremely well, So now
(36:40):
we're at a point. Now, wait what we're gonna do. Oh,
let's give it to Danny Green. Let's give it to
Gary new and let's give it to whoever's open on
the three. And we started knocking down shots, Paul George,
Danny Green again from way downtown. Now that adjustment that
you thought was gonna help you out isn't working because
you've got a guy like Danny Green that knocked it
down from three fair enough, And what about on the
(37:02):
flip side of the ball, Because I want to talk
about Pops defensive schemes in particular, what is it about
there man like and and the reason why I say it,
and I mean no offense, but I'm gonna go ahead
and say it. I've always looked, I've I've looked at
Spurs rosters and said, how the hell did they defend
like that? How are they do? How are they doing?
The attention to detail deal? Is it your commanding? You know,
(37:22):
accountability from everybody? What is it about Pops defensive schemes?
It goes down to Pop when he drafts, he drafts
guys who can play both ends of the floor. You think,
but Tony wasn't a great defender, but he had the
quickness to play defense. And someone comes, hey, you gotta
play defense or to play you pay attention to details.
And that's what these guys do on the defense, vent,
(37:45):
you know, and shoot around. It's all about defense. It's
never about what we're gonna do offensive. We're gonna run
this set, We're gonna run that set if it works
so big, if it doesn't, we move on to another set.
And let me just say this about the Spurs. Spurs,
the team is a very intelligent team. They pay attention
to detail, like I said, and with the Spurs, they
always say We're gonna put a foot in the paint,
hustle out to the guy, run them off the three,
(38:07):
because we had one of the best shot blockers they
ever played this game, and Tim Duckan. So if we
run them off the three, we're gonna funnel them in
the team into Tim. So that's how that defense works there.
They want to play defense. They're not saving it for
the offensive and they're saving the offensive end for the
defensive end. So that's how the team works. They played
very very well for forty eight minutes, and we only
played well for the pockets of of the game. And
(38:29):
you know, you can't be the team that's good playing
that way. You got everything they wanted, and uh, that's
gonna result on the laws. So we gotta regroup and
get ready for game for let's go ahead and transition
the game four. The game you know, it's a game
of runs, you know, and shout out to you know,
shout out to the you know, the living legend students
who always says that, you know, it's a game of runs.
So the Spurs started off, you know, they went up
(38:50):
to in you know, then they were down ten. Then
you know, bores dial you know again, one of the
others that we speak that we've spoken of so many times.
You know, he helped Sparking eleven to run the end
the first half. Can you speak to We're what that
you know what that does for a team when a
guy like boars d I was the one that's doing it.
Is weird that we haven't mentioned bars d album for
(39:10):
the first three games, and now all of a sudden,
this guy comes out of nowhere. It comes out and
plays extreme with find some real shot block by Leonard
Spurs can hold it for the final shots, gonna go
in for the last for the game's time, and and
that's the preparation guys do, and that's what Pop has
that trust and guys, there be guys that be starting
(39:32):
all of a sudden, you might not get any run,
as we would see with Thiago Splinting later on in
this series. That you know, okay, he's a consistent basis,
he's doing this for me, He's Donna. All of a sudden,
now this other guy is playing better, and Pop's not
afraid to say, you know what, you're not playing well.
This guy's playing well. I'm gonna pull the plug on
you and put somebody else in and that's how bars
Da is like after James Smith, duntr nice feed the
(39:53):
tha you think about it, he had great years and feedings,
you know, doing wonderful things for them in the playoffs
and now he's with this with the Spurs and he
came up big because big time players show up in
big time moments. And what's better to bring the big
time out of than go up because the big time
player and Lebron who he had to guard in this
series at certain points. Yeah, it's it's funny, you know,
you go back, you think back, there were you know,
(40:14):
there were periods that you know, I think it was
from from this series where Boris was referred to as
the Lebron stopper James. Just for perspective, can you describe
bords Dial in his game? Just just for folks said
you didn't necessarily watch him, Well, Barksdal is a mixture
of a couple of players. He's like a point guard
(40:37):
and a power forward body. Um. He has good ball
helening skills, but not great ball halening skills where you
can steal it from him. But he's a very very
smart player. He knows how to use his body. Imagine
Charles Barkley, you know, on a smaller level, you know,
that's how bars Dall is. I mean, he plays smart
like Charles. He knows how to use his body. But y'all,
(41:00):
you know, it's weird that we sit here calling Lebron
style with Lebron at game four's it's it's crazy. It's like,
I'll be honest with you, insert whatever player's name and
stop her. It probably never really was the case if
we're if we're being honest, let me just say that
someone ever said, hey, Roberto is a blank, blank stopper.
(41:21):
I'm like, dude, don't do that, because once you say that,
the guy's eyes light up. Said, I'm coming at you.
So you know, if anybody ever says, hey, I'm a stopper,
don't do that. I'm like, negate that right now. Don't
set you off a failure. I understand. I can. I
appreciate it, all right, So let's go ahead, and let's
go ahead and transition to Miami side of things, because
this was absolutely a must win game for Miami. If
(41:42):
you go to look, if you go down three one,
if you go down three one against the Spurs, you know,
like you in San Antonio, you can pretty much say
good night. But for me, it appeared to be that,
you know, Miami's defensive intensity. It seemed like that was
a difference in the second half cross court that you know,
the way it or something my way, you know, the
Big three, they kind of reminded themselves of that they're
the Big three. You know. Lebron was aggressive from the outset,
(42:03):
you know, you know, this was actually the first game
where he broke twenty plus points, you know in the series.
You know, Wade was also fantastic throughout. He had thirty
two sixty six deals, six boards, four assists, and particularly helped,
you know, kind of seal the deal in the fourth.
But I want to talk about Chris Bosh in particularly
because Boss he defended incredibly well and he produced twenty
and thirteen and two just and and two blocks. Just
kind of quietly Parker Spratt, Floor Hill, what the right
(42:26):
hand rejected by Bo? Can you speak to the I
guess the sacrifice that it that it took from a
player with the skill and the and the ability of
Chris Bosh to play that role and play it so well. Yeah,
you know, Chris Bosh, you know, with thirteen, twelve and
twelve and in the previous three games. And you look
at this game, but I'm not even gonna credit Chris Bosh.
(42:47):
I'm gonna credit you know, supposed to for making a change.
He started Mike Miller that game, which kind of opened
the floor for Bosh to move to that five position.
Now Boss has more room to operate. You know, he
goes and has twenty points. It's it's weird that this
dude has twenty points in the finals and we're not
talking about it because Lebron had thirty three, Dwayne Waite
(43:08):
he had thirty two. So Chris Boss a little twenties
seems like nothing, but it was big for him to
you know, put Tim duncan make him play defensive because
we know Tim is a great defender, but sometimes if
you go at a defender who's also who is also
a good office, but it can kind of wear them down.
And with Bosh on the scene, being able to go
at Tim duncan make some moves, knocked down some shots.
(43:31):
It created a lot of pressure on the Spurs defense
and so now offensively, you know, you look at him,
a hundred nine points the most they've scored so far
in this series. So it was it was. It worked
out great for the for the heat, and I think
you have to create a sposter for recognizing that, hey,
I need to get Bosh involved putting in the shooter
to spread the floor and you know, to you know,
to that point, you know, maybe another adjustment that you
(43:53):
know that that I kind of saw trending through over
the course of the series. Ray Allen plays the most
minutes that he's played so far, you know, throughout the
series with thirty you know is over thirty three. You know,
it contributes fourteen points off the bench. And while the
numbers don't jump off the page, can you speak to
what it's crazy that we we're just kind of now,
you know, talking about reality. Can you speak to what
you know, his presence, you know that you're being a
bona fide weapon. You know what that does to a
(44:14):
team like Miami. You think about really is one of
the greatest three points shooters ever played his game. And
with your presence on the floor, it's gonna put the
fear and a lot of defenders because you're not gonna
take three steps away from that guy. So the paint
is going to open up a little more, so you're
gonna be closer to reality than you will. Defense is
your schemes is changing when you want to get a
foot in the paint. So now you out there and
(44:36):
making sure reality doesn't get those easy and wide open threes.
But he still has fourteen points, and and and and
For me, sometimes just being a fear factor is enough
to change up a defensive scheme. Live to play another day.
You know Game five is gonna be a big one.
We have to do it again. That's the three man.
(44:56):
We got an opportunity to take a lead on Sunday.
We gotta we gotta be ready for it. So it's
the opportunity that we need to chaerish. All right, Rob,
let's wrap it up here. As you mentioned, this series
has been fantastic, but in part two, I cannot wait.
We've got one of the greatest shots in finals history.
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