Dwyane Wade: the Finals, the Aftermath and the Offseason

As a long time Dwyane Wade fan, the last few weeks have been very uncomfortable. There are just so many questions that I have no answers too. Watching Wade throughout this season has been a roller coaster. 

In some ways he has added to his legacy this year, shooting an outrageous 55% from the field and being a star on a team who made it to their 4^th straight finals. In other ways he has shown more of his age than ever before, clearly unable to play at a high level every night of the NBA season. Through the playoffs, Wade looked very good in patches, again being very efficient and making huge plays on both ends. He also had a strong start to the finals. He then faded quickly over the last three games, showing the state of his body and also state of his mind. He’s simply missed too many games and hasn’t taken enough shots over the past year to maintain his very important level on confidence. 

This heat roster, Wade being the prime case, looked far worse in the Spurs series than they probably are. Coming up against a hungry, ready force like the 2014 spurs would have been very tough. On the back of three straight finals appearances, and with a team so reliant on players at the very end of their careers, the heat simply didn’t have the energy to play with the spurs, and they knew it. I cant imagine how hard it would be mentally to play with a high level on energy and commitment when your opponent is running an almostperfect offence and not missing any shots in doing it. There were many times throughout the series when the heat simply didn’t work hard enough, or weren’t able to contest the shots that they had easily contested in the previous three years. Even when they did play adequate defense, the spurs hit the shots anyway. This made the heat look so much worse than they probably deserved to look. The spurs were the worst possible team to come up against, and they took full advantage of the heats deficiencies. Also, a team like Miami thrive off missed shots and getting out in transition. Its very hard to do that when your opposition literally never misses a shot. The boys were flat, deflated, exhausted, and outmatched, Wade included. By the end of the series Wade could not play the defense required, and on the other he consistently beat his man off the dribble (often spectacularly) but then almost never attempted to finish at the rim. His confidence and energy were shot. Wade constantly and effectively made outrageous passes to wide open perimeter shooters, who missed every time. Chalmers, Cole, Battier etc were awful, and Wade couldn’t simply go into top 20 all time mode anymore. That season is over.

So as a Wade fan, what do I want to happen now? As a fan who likes seeing him win championships, the ideal situation this off season is obvious. Wade follows Lebrons lead in opting out, and the signs a new 3 or 4 year deal worth less per year allowing the heat to retool. Wade could still be paid respectfully, but allow the team to add depth of which the heat had literally none of for most of the season. The perfect comparison here is Tim Duncan ,who in my mind has become the all time great franchise player. In 2012, Duncan had 4 rings, multiple MVPs and a top 10 NBA career. If Duncan had asked the Spurs for a max deal to see him out, he would have earned it,though it would have prevented the Spurs from filling out their roster withquality role players as they have now. Instead Duncan took a 3 year deal worth around 10 million per year. Still an amount that aligned with his worth in terms of production, but not a deal that handcuffed his team financially. 

On the other hand Kobe was in a similar position last year, coming off a majorinjury after a very productive, but in no way elite season. Kobe decided totake a 2 year deal worth roughly 24 million per year. Again, Kobe had earned this pay day after all he has done during his great career for the Lakers. Even though his current production did not warrant anywhere near that money, hiscareer had justified giving Kobe whatever he asked for. The issue here is that Kobe has long said that his only motivation to keep playing is to win championships. By signing that contract, Kobe signed away any chance he had of achieving that dream, and he knew it. So now the narrative quite tragicallygoes, that Kobe has been let down by the Laker front office for not surrounding him with quality teammates, while Tim Duncan is lucky to continue to play with great team mates. The truth is that both of these players sealed their fatewhen they signed these last contracts. This brings us back to Wade. Wade could easily decide to opt in to his current deal, and earn just over 20 million for the next 2 years. This would leave him at age 35 with 3 rings, and a top 20 NBA career. 

Nothing to sneeze at and he has earned the right to do this. If this is his decision, I will be disappointed that Wades championship window has closed, but not angry. The media of course will go after Wade as they often seem to do. While Kobe was signing an extension, Wade would simply be playing out his current deal, and should not be heavily criticized for it. If he wants to win however, he will opt out and sign or more Duncanesque deal. I think that Wade probably will do the winning thing over the money thing, but I cant be sure. I would not be surprised if Wade already knows his plan, and knows exactly how things will go from here. Theres no way that he, LeBron , Riley and Co haven’t already discussed this in detail. Wade is probably waiting it out, letting the world talk about him as he has always liked the attention (so does every other player in the L, Durant and Rose included).

This whole thing is just very uncomfortable, rooting for your boy to accept that hes not as good as he used to be. Im not ready for this heat team to stop competing for rings, although Im not the one who has to give up 10 million a year. Of course the average NBA fan can just move on, find a new guy, treat their old favorite like that Great Aunt with dementia that you have stopped talking about. But I cant, even at this point he's still worth watching for the chance that he will fake right, go left while splitting the double team, gather with two strides going opposite directions and then finish at the rim. It still happens sometimes, but not as much as I would like. 

The NBA Champs: Plus Some Things a Few Men Went and Said

The 2014 Finals are over..... damn!! Now we have to endure the offseason, pretend to care about the summer league then force ourselves to get excited about regular season match ups.

The surprise of how good the playoffs actually are for an NBA fan hits me every year as the dull of the regular season diminishes my excitement. Although the expectation for whats coming makes it all worth it. The Finals are always, even when it is a 5 game massacre, the perfect climax to the perfect crescendo.

This year we witnessed exactly that, an absolute routing of the defending champs. Not only did the spurs win, they won by a lot. After the series was tied after two games everyone thought we had another 7 game series on our hands. Then game 3 the Spurs pulled out a 71 point half, you know what happened, flipping amazing happened. Although we all knew Pop's team had that, or something close to that, we knew they could blast a team away with their fast paced High-Volume-Unselfishness per possession rate (HVU) offence. Lets not forget, the Heat were playing pretty well at this point on offencsive end as well, shooting 57% at the half, yet still getting absolutely pumped.

Game 4 came along and we all expected LeBron to have an FU game, or the Heat to just come out and fight for their pride. I expected a tied series at 2-2.
The game the spurs brought out for the 4th of the series was really something amazing. To do it once to an elite team was possible, to do it twice in a row, on the road, is ridiculous.
Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson kept throwing around remarks about how "surprised," and "disappointed" in the heat they were.
They were right. We all witnessed the two best teams in the league go head to head. One of which are the 2 time defending Champions and we saw the better team, destroy them. It was surprising, it was disappointing, but man it was beautiful.

At the start it didn't look like they were going to, but they finished game 5 the same way they played the final 3 games. And now the Spurs, are the NBA Champs. Tim Duncan one of the best of all time, top 10 for sure, wins his 5th. Tony has 4, and a hall of fame badge to go with it, I assume you get a badge, you should definitely get a badge.
Manu has 4, and should get a badge as well. The Spurs, what a dynasty.

You can read the x and o's elsewhere, although you can check out some of the lovely things we heard from the wonderful broadcasting team of Mark Jackson, Jeff Van Gundy (JVG), and Mike Breen here.

I think they did a great job might I add, but from an aussie fan, having to watch my favourite sport through League Pass, (which works sometimes) this is what I heard.

Mark Jackson - "Who, What, When Where Kawhi?"

Pre-Game
"Hey Mark, your looking pretty tired today,"

"Jeff, yeah man, I had a long one last night,"

"oh really, raccoons get into the kitchen again?"

"Nah man, just,...(yawns)..... doing work ready for today, was up till 4,"

"Greif, you plan out the whole broadcast did you?"

"ahh, noo, nope. Just, just working on, one line,
hmm, yeah, yeah its pretty good,"

"oh, okay Mark, well I look forward to it."

"you will know when it happens,"

Post-Game
"Great broadcast guys, very smooth, what a game!"

"Thanks Mike, you and Jeff really carried me again... (group laughter)..."

"Whatever Mark, you killed it as usual coach, spewing you didn't get the line you worked on in there though."

"oh nah, I ahh, I threw it in there,"

"oh you did? I'm... I'm sorry, I must have missed it"

"nah Jeff you responded, when Leonard made that dunk?"

"oh wait, was it the, what not, when, Kawhi something one?"

"yeah, yeah it was, Who, What, When, Where, Kawhi,"

"damn, I'm sorry Mark, yeah that was a... it was a good one, well done buddy, thats why we have you here," (said through a toothy smile).

People liked it though so that's fine (Per twitter). In the big scheme of things, he was correct though. We knew the Spurs were capable of this onslaught, although it was a massive surprise to see it, especially against Miami.
Mark Jackson's comment is completely justified and validated by the Finals MVP.

Going in, each of the teams respective Big 3's were going to be good, and for the most part they were. Check out the averages for the series (points, rebounds, assists, turnovers).

LeBron James - 28 ppg 7.8 rpg 4 apg 3.8 tpg
Dwyane Wade - 15.2 ppg 3.8 rpg 2.6 Apg 3.6 tpg
Chris Bosh - 14 ppg 5.2 rpg 1 apg 0.8 tpg

The Spurs big 3 kept well up to pace, besides LeBron being the best player in the world. They were still extremely impactful and forced the Spurs into dominating most of the series, with averages of:

Tony Parker - 18 ppg 0.4 rpg 4.6 apg 2 tpg
Timothy Duncan - 15.4 ppg 10 rpg 2 apg 2.4 tpg
Manu Ginoboli  - 14.4 ppg 3 rpg 4.4 apg 2.4 tpg

The battle of the big 3's, for the most part is fairly even. You could throw in a hundred arguments to throw the table either way. Considering not just the stats, general performance as well, LeBron had big nights, but that's scaled by quiet Bosh and Wade appearances. Yet from this series, although Miami's should be a lot better, the run of the big three's ended in a pretty close race.

What won this series, was the Kawhi factor,

JVG - "Hey guys you know the mystery of the Big Foot, well I think there is a new myth circulating through the San Antonio area, the myth of the Big Hand, BIG HAND KAWHI LEONARD." (Paraphrased quote)

This comment was so unfortunately forced, the "Big Hand," isn't a great nick name, but it's one that Jeff fully expects to catch on throughout NBA fan bases. Which it won't. He is also attempting to call Kevin Durant "Long arms," and LeBron "athletic man."

Kawhi, although was magnificent, and it was the supporting cast led by the well hung man himself (coz you know what big hands mean) (its just science), was what won it for the spurs. check out the series stats for the spurs supporting big 3.

Kawhi Leonard- 17.8 ppg 6.4 rpg 2 apg 1.8 tpg
Danny Green - 9.2 ppg 2 rpg 1.2 apg 1.2 tpg
Boris Diaw - 6.2 ppg 8.6 rpg 5.8 apg 1.6 tpg

Kawhi was massive, especially in the last 3 games, Danny Green did what Danny does and hit 3's and Boris was consistently masterful passing the ball.
Miami, had next to no supporting cast outside of a few plays from Ray, none that showed up regularly at least.
Hey and even Patty Mills was just as good as him, oh you don't believe me

Patty Mills - 10.2 ppg 1.4 rpg 1.6 apg 0.2 tpg
Ray Allen - 9.8 ppg 3 rpg 1.8 apg 1.6 tpg

(AUS pride reppin)

The Spurs supporting Big 3 + the rest of the contributors, were what brought it home for them. Those stats don't mention the Defence put up by those guys. Kawhi himself was guarding LeBron most of the time, Diaw when Leonard wasn't. Danny Green was intense and came up with big steals and made people adjust when he didn't.

Mark Jackson - "Hand down, Man Down,"

I have never been more sick of a phrase in my life, surely you can think of something new, 3.23 minutes after you just said it. Seriously, Mark found the inconceivable need to say the same flipping thing every time someone made a three. 

Which if you didn't notice, the Spurs do a heck of a lot. The Finals MVP, Manu, Danny, Diaw, Marco, Patty even Tony was knocking them down. The San Antonio, fast paced, Dantoni-esk offence, which makes more passes and screens than any motion we have seen in a long time, provides open looks for all of the highly capable shooters. It was beautiful.

Yes Kawhi got MVP, but Tim could have easily got it as well. 

I recon they should have just given it to Pop. He is the real MVP of this team, he makes it all work, he convinces every player to buy in and he makes them all better. 

The Big 3's had their battle, and in the end it was pretty close, with only LeBron being the obvious outlier. Although thats all Miami had. The Spurs on the other hand, had the Power of the Pop. He brought his veterans to the finals playing the best basketball they have all season, he backed his role players as usual and they outperformed the opposition more than comfortably. And he unleashed the "Big Hand" on the world, to wreck havoc as the future of the franchise. 

They were supreme in every facet. The Spurs NBA champs.

Jeff Van Gundy - "Spend your fathers day this year with the WNBA, the Mercury facing off against the Lynx starting at 1pm this weekend."

Or.... kids, wives, grandchildren and all those who respect a Dad somewhere, you could buy him a saw. Ten years ago, let it get wet, leave it out in the sun so it gets nice and rusty.
Then give it to him this fathers day.

No Jeff, during the NBA Finals, watching almost perfect basketball, I don't want to watch the WNBA, I would rather, well, cut my hand off with a rusty saw.

Well done.

J -