I have a very deep respect for the San Antonio Spurs. If the Celtics didn’t exist, I’d totally be a Spurs fan. So I’m gladly helping out our friends at Project Spurs with their coverage of the NBA Finals.
Today, I offered my take on Tony Parker’s amazing, back-breaking shot to ice Game 1.
[youtube id=”-Dh_-J4bTt8″ width=”620″ height=”360″]Here’s a bit of it:
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Amidst the chaos of a broken play, San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker just kept going.
Picks came and went. He was shut off trying to exploit a switch by Chris Bosh. After 15 seconds of dribbling, driving, twisting, and turning, he was on the floor. With two seconds left on the shot clock, he looked like this:
But he just kept going. Even with LeBron James, a tight-end sized freak of nature standing over him.
At the last possible instant, Parker let go a shot so feathery soft, it was like he was shooting alone after practice.
With the world falling apart around him, Tony Parker calmly broke Miami’s back. I’d call it a miraculous shot, if it wasn’t so perfectly “Spurs.”
That shot was a microcosm of the game itself. The Miami Heat were all over the Spurs for that entire possession like they were for most of the game. There was a point in the third quarter where it looked like the Heat just needed one little extra push to pull away and win comfortably. They never could, just like they couldn’t stop the Spurs even with the best player in the world standing over a prone Tony Parker and a few grains of sand left in the hourglass.
In the fourth, the Spurs just did Spurs things. Calmly, and without fear of failure, the Spurs marched back and took control. They didn’t need to be in control for all 48 minutes. They, like Parker as he found room under LeBron’s outstretched left arm, just needed to be in control for enough time at the end.
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