2013-14 NBA Finals

Result

Games

Finals MVP

Kawhi Leonard. Leonard was named Finals MVP after averaging 17.8 points on 61.2% shooting, the highest field-goal percentage of any Finals MVP; at 22 years old he was among the youngest Finals MVPs ever.

Series context

The 2014 Finals was a rematch of the previous year's dramatic seven-game series, pitting the two-time defending champion Miami Heat, seeking a third consecutive title and their fourth straight Finals appearance, against a San Antonio Spurs team determined to avenge its heartbreaking Game 6 loss the year before. San Antonio had posted the league's best record during the regular season and closed the year on a torrid run that included a long winning streak, while Miami stumbled over its last stretch of regular-season games, entering the Finals looking notably more vulnerable than in prior years. San Antonio dominated from the outset, winning Game 1 at home 110-95 in a game marred by an air-conditioning malfunction at the arena that caused LeBron James to suffer severe leg cramps and leave the game in the fourth quarter. Miami rallied for a narrow win in Game 2, but San Antonio reasserted control decisively from there, winning Games 3, 4, and 5 to close out the series 4-1 and capture the franchise's fifth championship. The Spurs' dominance was historic in its margin, among the largest average victory margins in Finals history to that point. San Antonio's title was widely praised as a triumph of team basketball and ball movement over star-driven isolation play, with commentators calling the Spurs one of the most beautiful-to-watch teams in the league for their crisp passing and shot selection under head coach Gregg Popovich. Kawhi Leonard's emergence as Finals MVP, at just 22 years old, signaled a changing of the guard within the Spurs' organization, foreshadowing his eventual ascension as the team's franchise cornerstone in the years after Tim Duncan's decline. This was also the first Finals since 1984 to use the traditional 2-2-1-1-1 scheduling format after the league abandoned the 2-3-2 format used the previous several years. For Miami, the lopsided loss effectively marked the end of the Big Three era, as LeBron James would opt out of his contract that summer and return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, breaking up the superteam that had reached four consecutive Finals. Leonard's series averages of 17.8 points on 61.2 percent field-goal shooting gave him the highest shooting percentage of any Finals MVP, and at 22 years and 351 days old he was the third-youngest Finals MVP ever and the youngest since Magic Johnson in 1982. San Antonio's Game 3 rout was punctuated by a Finals-record 75.8 percent shooting in the first half en route to a 71-point outburst, while Tim Duncan, at 38, broke Magic Johnson's career postseason double-doubles record and passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the most career playoff minutes in NBA history during the series. Tony Parker also moved past Michael Jordan into eighth on the all-time postseason assists list. The Spurs' four wins in the series all came by at least 15 points, part of a postseason run in which they posted 12 wins by 15-plus points, the most in a single playoff run in league history.

Sources

• Wikipedia - 2014 NBA Finals
• Basketball-Reference - 2014 NBA Finals
• NBC Sports - Tim Duncan breaks Magic Johnson's and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's records
• NBC Sports - Kawhi Leonard becomes youngest NBA Finals MVP since Magic