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The NBA Finals are leaving the pizza oven of San Antonio and headed back to the cut-with-a-knife humidity of Miami with the Spurs holding a 3-2 lead.
So which team faces more pressure entering Game 6 on Tuesday night?
Are the Spurs – who absolutely had to win Game 5 and did – under the gun because they have to win Game 6 in order to avoid the specter of winning a Game 7 on the road, which no team has done in the Finals since 1978?
SAN ANTONIO — Whatever was said to Manu Ginobili by Gregg Popovich must have been one hell of an inspirational speech. It was a Lazarus speech, because it brought Manu Ginobili back from the dead.
So what exactly was said in between Games 4 and 5 – a time when Ginobili was openly pondering retirement despite secretly knowing that he would be making his first start of the season.
What stuck in his head? What inspired him the most?
“That’s just family stuff,” Popovich said, dismissively.
Manu Ginobili, San Antonio’s super sixth-man, started his first game of the season Sunday night in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
Ginobili’s designated role off the bench for all these years has always been a mystery. He’s a three-time NBA champion, has averaged 15 points, five assist and three rebounds in limited minutes over the course of his career, and will one day be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The most important playoff series in NBA scheduling history — the one that changed the NBA Finals from a 2-2-1-1-1 format to the current 2-3-2 — began easily enough.
The leisurely pace of the first four games would get lost in the frenzy of the last three, but travel was not an issue the first 11 days of the 1984 NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers.
That’s how long it took – 11 days — to play four games.
LeBron James hadn’t even attempted at least 25 field goals in a game since Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Indiana. You have to go back to March 18 against Boston for the last time James converted on at least 15 field goals.
