The Spurs wanted this.

The Heat say they wanted this.

But most importantly, I wanted this to happen. Out of all the possible Finals match ups, this was the one I wanted to see the most.

The Spurs should have beaten the Heat last year–despite having an injured Tony Parker. This year, the Spurs’ bench is better, Kawhi Leonard is better, Manu Ginobili is not a shell of himself. The Heat meanwhile have gotten worse. Everyone outside of Lebron and Bosh is old as fuck. Erik Spoelstra is a good coach though, and if anyone can match wits with Greg Popovich, it is him (although let’s face it–pretty easy to trot out Lebron, Wade, and Bosh and get 50 wins in the putrid East). If the Spurs can play their game and pass like they did in the third quarter of game 6 against the Thunder, they won’t need 7 games to dispatch the Heat. But I’ll give Lebron the benefit of the doubt and say it takes 7 games for the Heat to be defeated.

Spurs in 7 or less

Congratulations to the Thunder for having another phenomenal year (and Russell Westbrook for coming back from three knee surgeries in one year–what a post season that guy had–ferocious!!) .As long as they Westbrook and Durant, they will always be able to compete, and get butts in the seats of that arena. Sure Clay Bennett could pony up the money to sign key free agents to fortify the bench and give Russ and KD some help (Besides Reggie jackson, there is no one other than Durant and Westbrook who can create their own shot), but that would mean taking money out of his oil funds to do so. I’m not saying they need to fire Scott Brooks, but he does need an offensive assistant to help create plays other than “Isolation with Westbrook, Isolation with Durant.”

There is a lot of things going on outside of the basketball court that doesn’t sit well with me. I’m not comfortable with the arena wide pre-game prayer. I’m not comfortable with the way the team was acquired, and I’m not comfortable with what is currently going on with the ownership group in general.

There is a lot of economy in Oklahoma City based on this group. Brick town was based around the basketball arena, and the company itself built a giant glass high rise (umm tornadoes??) right in the middle of downtown. Things change so quickly (just ask Donald Sterling), who is to say, the Chesapeake Energy group doesn’t get multiple lawsuits, multiple fines, found guilty of fraud and they end up selling the team to an investor who moves the franchise yet again? What if the company goes belly up? What would happen to all those buildings and establishments then with no team in town and no oil money to fund city projects? What happens to the city then? Just some things to think about. Nothing lasts forever, especially not title runs.

Which leads to this thought, if the Spurs do somehow manage to beat the Heat, this will be one of the best title runs of all time. The Spurs have gone through an underrated Dallas squad that took them to 7 games. They beat a pretty good Blazers team. handled this Thunder team with 2 of the NBA’s top five players on their team.Now they have to go through Lebron. Four more wins will cement the Spurs legacy and shut Phil Jackson up.

As many reasons as there are to root against the Heat, there are twice as many reasons to root for the Spurs to take this series. Game on. Thursday can’t get here fast enough.