Game 4 recap: What the Spurs and Heat leave us with

Tony Parker drives inside and underneath, then slips the ball out to Patty Mills, who has drifted down to the corner.  Mills is open, his hands ready.  Parker, under the basket and carried out of bounds, sidles up near the hoopstand then skips a little to his left, out away towards the wing he came from and far away from Parker, already leaking back towards the fast break and opening up the lane.

In the lane is where Tim Duncan has been for the majority of this possession.  After slipping a screen for Ginobili, who passed the ball to Mills, who swung it to Parker, who made his drive—after this screen Duncan fell towards the baseline, moving between the left elbow and the left block and opening up his body to show for the ball, and then parked himself comfortably on the left block.  But as soon as the ball crossed over to Mills in the corner, Duncan turns his body in the opposite direction, pivoting around and moving backwards square into the body of Bosh, who has gone over to block Parker’s shot.  It’s like Bosh had a target on him.  He’s the only player over 6’8 on the floor, and Duncan hits him right in the chest with his back, pins his left arm behind him, and backs him out of the paint.

Space also opens up in the lane because Manu Ginobili, on the other side, has darted in front of Dwayne Wade, after shoveling the ball to Mills, who swung it to Parker.  As soon as Parker leaves his feet to sling the ball  back over to Mills, he slides in front of Wade and puts a body between him and the basket at the left block.

There’s been much talk of how the Heat were lazy on this play, watched the ball, didn’t box out.  But Kawhi Leonard, who speeds down through the open lane, grabs the rebound for the most spectacular putback dunk of the playoffs and perhaps the whole season, also found his way there because every single Spur was doing what he needed to do, to a T, to make it happen.

If the Spurs win the Finals tonight, as they seem poised to do, it is because of this sort of sheer determination by every single one of the players to get the small things exactly right, all of the time.  After every game, this has been their refrain: we got to keep doing all the small things right.  While Erik Spoelstra talks excellently and eloquently to his team about focusing, about grinding, about executing, everything we hear from Popovich—and while we do not hear much, really, but the difference in what we do hear is telling—is about boxing out, about getting a loose ball, about running towards the chest of the defender, about getting the next rebound, about putting in five minutes of effort.  We talk about the Spurs as a machine, but the Heat use a vocabulary to describe themselves that is more process-based, that emphasizes abstract and vague mechanical workings.  The Spurs talk about concrete, definite, extremely small and extremely precise objectives, and attaining them every single possession.

Playing on this level, in an almost uncanny state of communion with the exact requirements of the moment, the instant, is indeed the only way they could put on the spectacular display they do.  So much work goes into every single use of the ball, so much effort risks being wasted through extra cuts, extra screens, extra passes which don’t go anywhere, that we begin to think that the question the Spurs ask themselves continually is not, “what extra work do I need to do to make the right move here,” but, “why would anyone ever do anything less than the right move?”

And that is the question they leave us with, ultimately: why would we ever want to do anything less than what is exactly demanded by the moment?  Why would we respond with anything less than full effort?  The answer is supplied by the Heat, who now have left themselves in the position of having to make history to come back from their 3-1 deficit—something no one has done: namely, to risk saving up that extra something for efforts that are more than what is required, that are exceptional and great and frankly unbelievable.  To not just respond, but to make a statement.  This, however, risks dismissing the fact that responses to what the situation demands are statements also, and that to be able to put in effort in the here and now, may be really also the only way to achieve as much as the Spurs have in the long term, to achieve something historic.