Ten years ago, the 2014 NBA Playoffs began
Throughout the playoffs, we will be reliving the Spurs’ magical 2014 championship run, which began with the hardest 1-8 matchup ever.
Tomorrow, April 20, is the tenth anniversary of the first Spurs game in the 2014 playoffs. While we know how that season ended (spoiler alert: happily), they came into the 2014 playoffs with memories of the 2013 Finals fresh, and painful, in their minds. The Spurs and their fans knew that the team faced a very tough road to even get back to the Finals, and that LeBron James and the defending champion Miami Heat would likely be waiting. In hindsight, the Spurs “Beautiful Game” championship seems inevitable today. But when the playoffs began on April 20, 2014, a Spurs victory parade was far from certain, or even likely.
The 2013-14 regular season Spurs were unique. Despite being a high-scoring team which led the league in three-point shooting at 39.7%, no one averaged 20 points during the regular season, or even close, led by Oui Frenchman Tony Parker with 16.7 points per game. Despite being an excellent passing team which led the league in assists, no player averaged six assists — Parker again led the team with 5.7 per game. Despite being a good rebounding team, no one averaged double digits — the Great Tim Duncan, who turned 38 during the playoffs, averaged 9.7 per game. Even more remarkably, and perhaps explaining the prior numbers, no Spurs player averaged even 30 minutes per game. As a result of spreading the minutes around, the Spurs had six different players average double digits in scoring, with nine players averaging over 8 points per game. Oddly, bench player Marco Belinelli was one of the players in double figures, while 2013 Finals star DannyGreen! averaged only 9 points per game.
The Spurs finished the regular season with an excellent 62-20 record, best in the league. They were not the leader in offensive or defensive efficiency — coming in sixth in both — but that combination led to the best point differential in the league as they outscored their opponents by an average of 8 points per game.
Despite all their regular season success, the Spurs had a very difficult path if they wanted to get back to the Finals. The Western Conference had a very impressive top eight teams, with seven teams winning fifty games or more sitting as potential road blocks to the Finals (listed by seed):
2. 59-23 Oklahoma City Thunder, led by MVP Kevin Durant
3. 57-25 LA Clippers, led by Chris Paul and Blake Griffin Clippers
4. 54-28 Portland Trail Blazers, led by LaMarcus Aldridge and Damian Lillard
5. 54-28 Houston Rockets, led by the James Harden and Dwight Howard
6. 51-31 Golden State Warriors, led by the young Steph Curry/Klay Thompson/Draymond Green trio, and…
7. 50-32 Grit-n-Grind Memphis Grizzlies, led by Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph and Tony Allen.
Remarkably, the first six of these seven teams had a better point differential than every team in the East, including the Heat. The Spurs knew that if they won their first round match-up, they would have to defeat two of these teams to make the Finals — presumably the best two because those teams would have defeated the others to get to the Spurs.
With the best record, the Spurs started the playoffs playing the eighth seed in West in the first round. That team — the Dallas Mavericks — only missed 50 wins by one game, going 49-33. That record would have placed the Mavs in third place in the East, but instead they finished eighth in the West. That’s as tough a first round matchup as any top seed could ask for; meanwhile the top team in the East (not the Heat, but the Indiana Pacers) got to open the playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks, who finished 38-44 and had been outscored on the season.
The Mavs proved their mettle right away against the Spurs. In the first game, the Spurs barely prevailed, winning a defensive battle 90-85. The Mavs held the Spurs, who led the league in three-point percentage, to 3 of 17 from three, with all 3 three-pointers by My Man Manu Ginobili. The remainder of the Spurs were 0 for 11. Two players who later keyed the Spurs in the Finals, Patty Mills and Boris Diaw, scored a combined 6 points between them.
In the second game, the Mavs blew out the Spurs 113-92, tying the series at one game apiece. This defeat meant that the Spurs, who had spent the season working to garner home-court advantage in the playoffs, lost that advantage after only two games. The Spurs’ road to an NBA Championship for 2014 was anything but inevitable, especially in April of 2024, as the team climbed onto their bus to travel to Dallas for Game Three of the opening round, unsure of what was in store.
