We\u2019re about to party like it\u2019s 1999.<\/p>\n
With their Game 7 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Saturday night<\/a>, the San Antonio Spurs locked in a NBA Finals rematch from the lockout-shortened 1999 season, pitting the Spurs against the New York Knicks. While a No. 2 seed from one conference playing a No. 3 seed from the other doesn\u2019t seem like a wild upset, only two of the 33 members of The Athletic\u2019s NBA staff predicted the matchup before the playoffs started<\/a>.<\/p>\n Accordingly, we\u2019re giving Eric Koreen and Eric Nehm the floor to explain how and why they saw this coming.<\/p>\n Koreen: Saturday was a landmark night for handsome geniuses named Eric, Eric. With the Spurs\u2019 win, we correctly predicted the two teams competing in the NBA Finals, unlike all of our colleagues. Should we hang a banner halfway between Toronto and Milwaukee? Apparently that would be in Waverly, Mich.<\/p>\n We did it, so we really deserve to take our victory lap, because it\u2019s not like either of us picked the Rockets (Editor\u2019s note: Koreen did) or the Raptors (Editor\u2019s note: Nehm did) to win their first-round series. No, we were perfect.<\/p>\n I want to start with the Eastern Conference, simply because that seemed like the more straightforward of the two picks to me, with the predictions of our peers backing that up: The Knicks received the second-most votes to win the conference, behind only the Boston Celtics, while the Spurs were third out West, behind Oklahoma City and the Denver Nuggets. What made you lean toward the Knicks to come out of the East? Like me, did you also find that prediction easier to make than taking the Spurs to represent the West?<\/p>\n Nehm: You\u2019re correct. I thought the Eastern Conference was easier to pick than the Western Conference, but that had just as much to do with the Knicks as it had to do with the rest of the conference.<\/p>\n The Knicks, in my opinion, had the most talent of any team in the East heading into the playoffs. Jalen Brunson might not be an MVP candidate, but he has been a second-team All-NBA player each of the last three seasons and the undisputed leader of the Knicks since joining the team in 2022. OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns are all great players who can do a little bit of everything and step up on any given night. And new head coach Mike Brown has maximized the contributions from the rest of the roster in a way that Tom Thibodeau could not during his five-year tenure in New York.<\/p>\n When I looked at the rest of the conference, I had too many questions. Detroit had never been through the rigors of a postseason run. Boston had a spectacular regular season, but the Celtics were trying to integrate Jayson Tatum as he made his return from a torn Achilles as they were getting ready for the playoffs. Cleveland had James Harden. And with Tyrese Haliburton and Giannis Antetokounmpo both injured and out of the playoffs, the rest of the conference didn\u2019t have any championship equity. So, it had to be the Knicks.<\/p>\n What did you see in the Knicks?<\/p>\n Koreen: To me, there were only two teams that I considered in the East: Boston and New York. The Celtics\u2019 close to the season, when Tatum returned from his injury and looked healthy, gave me pause. They looked excellent. Still, the uncertainty over his short-term health made me stick with my preseason prediction for the conference winner \u2014 the Knicks.<\/p>\n It was funny hearing Knicks fans and observers talk about their season. It was full of angst, and I get it: They\u2019re the Knicks; bad things tend to happen to them. They had some real issues surrounding the constitution of their starting lineup, and the performance of Bridges in particular.<\/p>\n They were healthy, though, and they were solid in the macro sense. They ranked fourth in offensive efficiency and seventh in defense. That screams championship contender. My confidence in the Knicks was helped by their season series against the team I cover, the Toronto Raptors, as they swept them 5-0, never winning by fewer than 16 points.<\/p>\n I wonder if some of the doubt for the Knicks came from the intense coverage of the team, and the zeroing in on their weaknesses. For obvious reasons, the Knicks are covered with exceptional depth, and that inevitably results in a zoomed-in view of their flaws. I don\u2019t know how you felt when the Bucks won the title, but in 2019, I picked the Raptors to lose to both Milwaukee in the Eastern Conference finals and to Golden State in the finals because their weaknesses loomed larger than their strengths in my mind over the course of the year. At least for me, failure lingers longer and more strongly than success.<\/p>\n We can both agree that picking the Spurs in the Western Conference was the braver pre-playoffs pick. Why did you land on them?<\/p>\n Nehm: The West was much more difficult to try to predict because the Spurs and Thunder were both so good this season. Ultimately, though, I went with the Spurs for a few reasons.<\/p>\n Repeating is incredibly difficult. I covered the Bucks\u2019 attempt to do it in 2021-22. They put together a great season, and Antetokounmpo was at the peak of his powers. But Khris Middleton suffered an injury in the first round and couldn\u2019t get back. In the end, the Bucks didn\u2019t have enough and lost to the Celtics in the second round.<\/p>\n I had no idea that Jalen Williams would end up missing nearly the entire postseason, but he had struggled with his hamstring all season long. These are just the kinds of things that happen to teams that attempt to repeat. It\u2019s just so much basketball in a short period of time, and it wears on even the deepest teams.<\/p>\n On top of that, the Spurs are a spectacular team that matched up well against the Thunder. I thought their perimeter defenders were overlooked this season because of Wembanyama\u2019s brilliance. I was disappointed to see Stephon Castle end up a few votes short of making an All-Defensive team because I thought he was one of the most disruptive perimeter defenders in the NBA. And their perimeter defenders showed all of that in their victory over the Thunder.<\/p>\n Add in Wembanyama\u2019s individual greatness and growth, as well as his desire to prove himself on the biggest stages, and it felt like they were the team that could topple the Thunder in the West.<\/p>\n How did you come to view the Spurs as the team that would represent the Western Conference in the NBA Finals?<\/p>\n Koreen: I didn\u2019t trust Denver\u2019s defensive infrastructure with Aaron Gordon never fully healthy, so, to me, the West was also a two-team proposition. The Thunder were the more conventional choice. I had trouble picking against them.<\/p>\n There was something about the nature of the season series that made me consider it more than I usually would with regular-season games \u2014 I generally don\u2019t care about the season series at all, frankly. The Spurs won four out of five games against the Thunder, with Wembanyama\u2019s availability all over the place. As you mentioned, the layers to the defense that the Spurs could use against Shai Gilgeous-Alexander felt real and repeatable. I didn\u2019t see him struggling as much as he did in the series, before the MVP delivered a brilliant Game 7, but his 58.9 percent true shooting against the Spurs in the regular season didn\u2019t seem like a fluke to me. That was the lowest mark he had against any Western Conference team this year.<\/p>\n More than that, however, I found myself coming back to one question: If we are going to continue to say that Wembanyama is unlike anyone we have ever seen before \u2014 and he is \u2014 why should his team have to conform to the conventional wisdom that a team has to lose on a big stage before it can win there? The guy is nicknamed The Alien. I revere Jordan and LeBron as much as the next person, and we know how long they had to wait to break through. But they lived in an era of dynasties. In a league that has been defined by parity since the dissolution of the Durant\/Curry Warriors, why should Wembanyama have had to wait, especially if the Thunder were fatigued and not fully healthy?<\/p>\n