How They Got Here

Los Angeles: Unburned from having to be known as the team that works for the NBA’s most onerous executive, the Clippers overcame depth and injury issues per usual to wrest the three seed out of the wicked Western Conference. Lumped in with several other Western championship contenders to start the year, the Clippers managed to overcome Blake Griffin’s rather frightening staph infection in his right elbow, one that forced him to undergo surgery and leave the Clipper lineup for 15 games.

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Just as Griffin circled the wagons the year before, point guard Chris Paul turned in an MVP-level season both with Blake and without. The All-Star ran the NBA’s best offense and managed 19.1-point and 10.2-assist averages while turning it over just 2.3 times a contest. J.J. Redick shot the lights out for most of the season, and coach/president Doc Rivers wrested capable performances from yet-again laughable crew of role players both familiar (Hedo Turkoglu shot 43 percent from long range, Glen Davis saw major minutes) and way-too familiar: Rivers traded draft picks for his son Austin midway through the season, and the younger Rivers failed to take off in his father’s presence.

Understandable concerns about the team’s defense lingered for most of the season, despite Rivers’ pronouncements that center DeAndre Jordan (leading the league in rebounds at 15 a game while becoming the first player to shoot over 70 percent since Wilt Chamberlain) was far and away the league’s top defensive player – an argument that is shaky at best and a little embarrassing at worst once one considers the hyperbolic nature of Rivers’ statements. That defense improved considerably in the second half of the season, however, as the Clippers look to take their first title with a top-ranked offense and overall middling defensive statistics.

San Antonio: It was stereotype San Antonio performance, really, not exactly playing possum for 2014-15’s first months but still relying on a white hot run of play to end the season to strike fear into the Western Conference bracket yet again, doing so for the 54th time since the construction of the Berlin Wall. Turning in at “only” the sixth seed, the Spurs hope to recreate the magic of a sixth-seeded Houston Rocket team from two decades ago, one that won close series after close series in a similarly-packed West on its way to consecutive titles.

San Antonio wasn’t just resting its players while biding its time until the snow melted, point guard Tony Parker struggled with age and injury prior to righting his play in the final third of the season. Manu Ginobili suffered an ankle sprain after the All-Star break, and Kawhi Leonard was limited to just 31.8 minutes a contest over 64 games due to a hand injury and coach Gregg Popovich’s righteous quest to keep his players at peak form in June’s second week. Leonard’s gifts remain tantalizing, he’ll lead the league in steals by a sound margin despite playing so few minutes, and his post-up game is improving by leaps and bounds. Tony Parker wasn’t just pumping the prospect up when he called the Spurs Leonard’s team earlier in April.

Then there’s Popovich, thinking on his feet once again and taking advantage of his younger swingmen’s (including Danny Green) ability to cause turnovers and leak out onto the controlled break. The Spurs finished second in defensive efficiency once again, but it’s to Coach Pop’s everlasting credit that the team climbed to that ranking in entirely new ways with an emerging crew that supports its bulwark coach and Hall of Fame-bound veterans.

We’ve also made it this far without mentioning Tim Duncan, who turned in a superior defensive season while providing All-Star level per-minute production at age 38. The man is an absolute marvel, and he has as good a chance as any NBA superstar in leading his team to a title this year.

Head to Head

Depending on your definition of a classic, the teams may have given us one when the Clippers hung on to down the Spurs in the team’s last regular season meeting on Feb. 19, with San Antonio purposely sending DeAndre Jordan to the line 28 times (he made 10 and finished with 26 points and 18 rebounds). Tim Duncan, giddy at the thought of a slowed-down game, scored 30 with 11 rebounds in one of his better games of the year. The Clippers also beat San Antonio at home on Jan. 31 during the dregs of Tony Parker’s (2-10) shooting woes.