We’ll focus on each of the eight first-round series in due time, but as the 2015 NBA Playoffs arrive — the brackets clean and all 16 teams starting at 0-0 — what broader themes emerge?
The first thought that comes to mind is that another professional basketball postseason offers a fascinating mix of the old and the new.
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The Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers are gone — not just from the top two seed positions in the Eastern Conference, but from the playoffs altogether. The same goes for the Oklahoma City Thunder in the West: One year’s No. 2 seed is the next season’s abrupt dismissal, before the third Saturday of April. These departures form one of the strikingly new and different components of the 2015 playoff field.
Naturally, the absence of teams we’d become accustomed to in the April-through-June whirl of playoff activity means that unfamiliar teams have taken center stage: The Atlanta Hawks and Golden State Warriors are now leading contenders to make the NBA Finals. The Cleveland Cavaliers — out of sight and out of mind the past several seasons — are now prime championship contenders as well. Gee, which person is responsible for THAT? (Insert winking emoticon here.)
Yet, the arrival of new contenders doesn’t necessarily mean that the these playoffs represent a changing of the guard in the NBA. What’s perhaps the most noticeable feature of these playoffs is precisely the possibility that when we get to the first week of June, the Finals will feature the same basic clash we’ve seen each of the past two years:
LeBron James versus the San Antonio Spurs.
Moreover, when you look at the two teams best positioned to prevent “LeBron v. Spurs” from happening, they certainly do a lot of things the way the Spurs do them.
San Antonio doesn’t have to win the title for its identity to gain even more of a place in the modern-day NBA. New faces in the pool of primary championship contenders only underscore how this season has affirmed the staying power of the Spurs and LeBron himself.
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Let’s start with Bron-Bron. The way he has fit into Cleveland in his second go-round with the Cavs is different — not just from his first tour of NBA duty in northeastern Ohio, but from his stay in Miami.
Sure, the Heat traded for some role-player pieces on their recent Eastern Conference championship clubs (think Chris Andersen), but Miami was a team that relied on a number of players drafted and developed within the organization to form the bulk of its supporting cast: Udonis Haslem, Mario Chalmers, and Norris Cole all come to mind. It was Cole who swung last year’s East Finals series with his defense on Lance Stephenson in Game 2 in Indianapolis.
With this Cleveland team, it’s been different. The Cavaliers were going nowhere quickly, and with input from LeBron, Cleveland pulled the trigger on the deals that brought Timofey Mozgov, J.R. Smith, and Iman Shumpert to town. Those transactions turned the season around for the Cavs.
Sure, one could claim that in 2011, LeBron had to get to know and trust Erik Spoelstra the same way he’s trying to trust David Blatt now. However, while one can find some shared characteristics in those two relationships, the differences appear to be much more substantial, the chief one being that LeBron has evolved as a player, person and leader since that first tumultuous season in Miami. The other primary difference is that we’ve seen Spoelstra prove and re-prove himself as a legitimately good (if not great) coach. The jury is still very much out on David Blatt, and that’s going to be one of the central stories to watch during these playoffs.
LeBron, Kevin Love, and Kryie Irving — they’re three stars on a title-contending roster, but the nature of these relationships is substantially different from LeBron’s former triumvirate with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami.
What’s old and what’s new with LeBron James, as he tries to take Cleveland to the promised land?
The city and the franchise are familiar, as is the presence of a coach whose quality (hello, Mike Brown in 2009 and 2010) is being questioned. LeBron is part of a starting lineup populated by three stars (as was the case in Miami), but there’s a different feel to his supporting cast. He’s acknowledged as the best player on his team, but unlike Miami, he’s the locally beloved player, so he doesn’t need to worry about blending in as he did in the 2011 season, with Dwyane Wade being the face of the Heat franchise. On this Cleveland team, LeBron is the star with the most NBA experience. In Miami, Wade fit that description.
What’s old and what’s new? Plenty… but the most central aspect of the Eastern Conference playoffs is that LeBron remains very much at the heart of them… again.
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Now, we turn to the Spurs. Sure, they’re chasing a repeat title and a third straight NBA Finals, with the window on the Tim Duncan-Tony Parker-Manu Ginobili era getting smaller (though how much smaller is the real question for everyone to debate). However, the centrality of the Spurs in these playoffs is hardly limited to the Spurs themselves.
The most noticeable extension of “The San Antonio Way” in these playoffs is Atlanta coach Mike Budenholzer, a former assistant to Gregg Popovich. The Hawks’ sublime and supreme manifestation of balanced scoring and shared production mirror the Spurs’ commitment to the team game, the antithesis of hero-ball. Even if you hadn’t watched a Hawks game all season, you’d look at their stats — especially on offense — and say, “Boy, that seems like a very Spurs-y team.” Quite simply, it is.
We don’t need to have a Cleveland-San Antonio Finals to give us “LeBron versus the Spurs” in these playoffs. A Cleveland-Atlanta East Finals series would do the same… just not with Gregg Popovich or his most trusted players. San Antonio’s methods have reached to the Peach State in this NBA season.
As for Golden State, the connection to San Antonio is not found so much in any one individual (Budenholzer), but on some broader levels. It’s true that the head coach of the Warriors, Steve Kerr, played under Popovich and certainly learned something from him. However, Kerr also played for Phil Jackson — it’s not as though he is cut from only one cloth.
There are two noticeably strong links between Golden State and the Spurs. One is the on-court combination of crisp ball movement and versatile defenders. The specific patterns and actions you see might not be the same, but the values and goals of the Dubs and Spurs are united: Getting the best shot on offense, and displaying adaptability on defense to account for varying chess moves by opponents. Kawhi Leonard and Draymond Green inhabit different basketball bodies, but their shared ability to defend different kinds of players forms a core strength of their respective teams. Golden State and San Antonio have a lot in common when viewed through a certain lens.
The other common thread between the Warriors and Spurs can be traced to Kerr’s main assistant coach, longtime NBA assistant (and former head coach) Alvin Gentry.
In 2005, the Western Conference Finals featured a classic contrast in styles… and the San Antonio Spurs were not the team with a wide-open offense and an eye-pleasing style. Those qualities belonged to the Phoenix Suns, where Mike D’Antoni was the coach and Gentry was his lead assistant.
Gentry’s presence as Kerr’s lead assistant with Golden State is obviously no accident. Kerr was a consultant for the Suns when the D’Antoni era was taking shape. He later became the general manager of the Suns and occupied the position when D’Antoni left and Gentry became the full-time head coach. Kerr and Gentry made the 2010 West Finals with the Suns, Steve Nash’s last serious run at an NBA title. (Nash, of course, retired very recently.)
If the Spurs stood on the opposite side of a Kerr/D’Antoni/Gentry way of doing things in 2005 and through the end of the past decade, it is clear that they have remade themselves in recent years. It’s not a new story, and it’s not one that needs a re-telling, but the simple reality of the Spurs reinventing themselves around their offense shows that they have become — well — a bit “Gentry-fied.” (Try the veal — I’ll be here all week.)
Golden State might not even face the Spurs in these playoffs… not if the Los Angeles Clippers have anything to say about the matter. Yet, if the Warriors do face the Spurs in the West Finals, the contrast in styles seen 10 years ago would give way to a clash of kindred basketball identities.
As said above, the Spurs don’t have to win the championship to affirm their place as the main creator of the NBA’s most successful methodology. The teams in Atlanta and Oakland could carry that torch… unless the Spurs’ opponent in the past two NBA Finals — LeBron James — is able to stand in the way.
What’s old and what’s new in the 2015 NBA Playoffs? They really are one and the same thing.
