And so they meet again, the two foes that could not be more different.
Besides a shared Latin American culture within its fanbase, the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat seem worlds apart. One team has the best player on the planet walking around, the flash and pizzazz of South Florida with all the glitz and glamour that comes with. It is a new school and new age idea of what basketball has become — an assemblage of talent by a team president that is himself a dichotomy of his basketball origins.
Pat Riley, president of the Heat, comes from the basketball background of Kentucky, the storied college basketball powerhouse and was coached by Adolph Rupp. You may remember Rupp as the antagonist in the Disney movie Glory Road if you don’t recognize him as one of the greatest college basketball coaches that ever lived. After Riley’s playing career, he became a broadcaster for a short period before becoming head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. He then took the NBA by storm over the next decade by implementing fast-paced brand of basketball dubbed “Showtime,” piloted by Magic Johnson and anchored by Kareem Abdul-Jabar. It was a new way to play roundball, and 30 years later, again ahead of the curve, Riley’s at it again on the opposite coast.
He’s built a team around three key stars, with a dominant small forward in LeBron James. It’s not the old-school blueprint on how to build a champion with an increased reliance on thrift store priced role players, but it’s one that’s produced two NBA championships in a row, and the Heat look well on their way to a third.
Standing in their way is their opposite. The homegrown squad with starters most fans can’t name. It is a group not spontaneously thrown together in 2010 but grown over the course of what seems like a millennia.
They are meticulous and fundamental in everything they do, a nod to a head coach with a military mind who played his college basketball at Air Force — Greg Popovich. Popovich has built the NBA’s version of the New England Patriots, a consistent winning machine that started success near the turn of the century and hasn’t stopped since. He even shares Patriot’s head coach Bill Belichick’s “excitement” for talking to the media.
But, unlike his counterpart, NBA architect Riley, Popovich did not stray from a conservative and structured mold in his most successful coaching stop. More accurately, “Pop” built a basketball robot that consistently performs at peak efficiency while fluctuating from “veteran” to “old” every time they win or lose. They have the ageless wonder at power forward — Tim Duncan, and imports from France, the Virgin Islands, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Canada and Italy.
The teams met last year of course, and without some bad bounces and a dagger Ray Allen three pointer, things could be a lot different. The Spurs would be fresh off their fifth NBA title, looking to repeat. Instead, history was written differently and James, Riley, Allen et al. got to celebrate another championship, their second in a row.
If the Heat can win this title, Pat Riley will again be in the spotlight. Not necessarily for the team he’s put together, but because of what it was able to do. There’s a term for the feat, because not only did Riley just accomplish it with the Lakers back the late-80s but he actually legally trademarked it — the three peat.
Follow Richard Johnson on Twitter @RagjUF
Miami Heat forward LeBron James participates in practice on Wednesday in San Antonio, Texas. The Heat face the San Antonio Spurs tonight for Game 1.
