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’.