2012-13 NBA Finals

Result

Games

Finals MVP

LeBron James. James averaged 25.3 points, 10.9 rebounds, and 7.0 assists per game and won his second consecutive Finals MVP award, joining Michael Jordan and Bill Russell as the only players to win the regular-season MVP and Finals MVP in consecutive years.

Series context

The 2013 Finals matched the two-time defending Eastern Conference champion Miami Heat, who finished the regular season a league-best 66-16 including a historic 27-game winning streak, against a veteran San Antonio Spurs team that went 58-24 and was seeking to add a fifth championship to the Tim Duncan-Tony Parker-Manu Ginobili era. Miami had home-court advantage and was seeking back-to-back titles after beating Oklahoma City the previous year, while San Antonio, despite its pedigree, had never lost an NBA Finals in franchise history entering the series. Miami won the first two games at home, but San Antonio stormed back, blowing out the Heat in Game 3 to seize momentum. The Spurs then took Game 5 as well, pushing Miami to the brink of elimination and taking a 3-2 series lead heading back to Miami. Game 6 became one of the most celebrated games in Finals history: trailing 94-89 with just over five seconds remaining, and with James having missed what appeared to be a series-ending shot, Miami's Ray Allen retreated to the corner and buried a game-tying three-pointer off a Chris Bosh offensive rebound, sending the game to overtime, where the Heat prevailed 103-100. Miami then closed out the series in Game 7, winning 95-88 to capture their second consecutive championship, 4-3. Ray Allen's shot became known simply as 'The Shot' among Heat fans and is considered one of the most dramatic plays in Finals history. LeBron James recorded a triple-double in that same Game 6 (32 points, 11 rebounds, 11 assists), reinforcing his status as the league's premier player. The series featured four past Finals MVPs on the two rosters, Duncan, Parker, Wade, and James, the most in a single Finals since 1987, underscoring the collision of championship pedigree involved. This was also the last NBA Finals to use the 2-3-2 scheduling format before the league reverted to the traditional 2-2-1-1-1 format the following year. San Antonio's crushing defeat, after having control of the series in the closing seconds of Game 6, set up a rematch the following season that the Spurs would use to exact revenge. In the decisive Game 7, James scored a game-high 37 points on the road to the title, tying a mark set by Tommy Heinsohn in 1957 for most points scored in a Finals Game 7 victory, and became the first player since Magic Johnson in 1991 to record two triple-doubles in a single Finals series. San Antonio also set a Finals record with 16 three-pointers made in Game 3, and shot 60 percent from the field as a team in Game 5, something no team had done in the Finals since Orlando in 2009. The series featured a Finals-record ten international players across the two rosters, and it marked San Antonio's first Finals loss in five trips to the championship round in franchise history, an especially painful outcome given the Spurs had led by five points with under thirty seconds to play in regulation of Game 6.

Sources

• Wikipedia - 2013 NBA Finals
• Basketball-Reference - 2013 NBA Finals