NBA Finals: San Antonio Spurs vs. Miami Heat – last ‘thought’ standing

With both Game 6 and 7 back in Miami, who will win the battle of wits: Spurs’ Gregg Popovich or Heat’s Erik Spoelstra?

Sport means different things to different people. Even among the same class of people (say, players), what a sport is to a particular person is very specific to him.

Teams, especially NBA teams, have been witness to some of the most diverse bunch of players playing together. Be it the flamboyant Dennis Rodman alongside the intense Michael Jordan, or the ever-jolly Shaq alongside the opposite extreme, Kobe Bryant; teams have had to battle contrasting personalities and contrasting ways in which those personalities approach the game. How much respect a particular player shows to a sport is very different from his peers or teammates.

On a slightly different note, Immanuel Kant once stated that when we see the moon, we don’t really see the moon. None of us can know what the moon is. We merely sense our perception of what we have come to conceive as the moon.

Analogously, none of us can know what basketball is. It is what it is to us individually. The sport is different to Jordan and Kobe. For some, it is flamboyance; for a LeBron James or a Kevin Durant it is redemption from the struggles they had to face as children. In fact, to anyone who looks closely enough, basketball or any other sport is more than just a game.

So is the case with the 2013 NBA finals. The finals aren’t just a clash between two powerhouses in the NBA; they are a clash between two identities, two philosophies.

One team believes in an organic system of basketball, which evolves and gives results as the game progresses. They don’t put the individual before the team. They don’t spend big money on players; they make them worthy of big money; Kahwi Leonard, for instance. In fact, they pick up players nobody sees value in and turn them into game changers; Danny Green has been in the thick of things, hasn’t he?

Through all of it, they keep their core of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker intact; one which wasn’t bought off the market but gradually evolved. With every pass, every cut, every screen, every rebound and then every pass, cut and screen again, the game just evolved on the spur of the moment (pardon the pun). They don’t play the game; the game plays them.

The other team has the best basketball player on the planet playing in James. They put together the most versatile, effective and feared triumvirate in NBA along with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to do one thing: win the championship and a ring every year. While most teams will say that anything less than a ring is failure, there are few teams who really embody that spirit.

These teams are not in it to make the playoffs. They are not in it to set franchise records. Setting the all-time record for the second-longest win streak means nothing to them. They are not in it for any kind of glitter except if it’s the ring. They rely on their talent and their will to seem desperate on the court despite being arguably the best team in the league. They champion that sort of intensity; being desperate. They hustle, hound and hack on the defensive end. It’s less organic, more deliberate; something like ‘we will strip the ball off you and score at the other end before you can blink’.

Gregg Popovich gathers his team during Game Four of the 2013 NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs on June 13, 2013 at AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas. (Getty Images)

The clash of philosophies couldn’t be starker – the team that relies on process versus the team that relies on people.

And it confuses you about whom to root for if you don’t have a clear favourite.

Don’t you want the veteran team which personifies loyalty, trust and teamwork and is coached by a strict father figure aptly nicknamed Pop to win? Wouldn’t you want to see the perseverance of the organisation and the players like Tim Duncan who could have skipped boats in search of a championship, be rewarded? Would it not break your heart if the extremely talented, tremendously graceful but uncharacteristically humble NBA stars like Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker were unable to have another ring?

And then again, shouldn’t talent be aptly rewarded? Should not a team who set the league record for the second-longest streak have nothing left to prove, if consistency is what a gruelling NBA season seeks to test? Don’t you want the inspirational struggle of LeBron and his mother to have another ring to be proud of and to give hope to the rest of the kids out there? Don’t you want the affable, humble and rigorously dedicated all-time three point leader in Ray Allen be rewarded one more time? If talent, effort and intensity don’t deserve a ring, what does?

In a win or go home situation like the post-season, we throw the numbers out of the window. No one cares about what happened before; no one cares that you have the most efficient offensive or defensive system in the world; no one cares that you have the win streak; no one cares that you are the best; no one cares whether you swept your conference finals or had to go to a game 7; no one cares about anything except who won the ring.

That is the travesty of professional sports.

The wins are so hard fought that we forget how hard the fight was. We will invariably perceive the winner’s philosophy to be the superior one. Teams will try to replicate what is championed this year.

Teams have already started sacking coaches despite them having taken their teams to franchise records (Lionel Hollins of the Memphis Grizzlies, George Karl of the Denver Nuggets and Vinny Del Negro of the LA Clippers).

Children in small rooms in far off countries will seek inspiration. An NBA hopeful in a hamlet in India or in a gym in Atlanta will close his eyes and see himself lifting the trophy. We can only hope that time will reward the philosophy which will do greater good.

This is after all, more than a game.