Spurs vs. Heat, NBA Finals Game 6: Miracle comeback, overtime win saves Miami’s season

Bosh probably has a right to sling those words at Miami fans.

Bosh finished with just 10 points, but it was his 11 rebounds, two blocks and three steals that represented the mark he made in the elimination game.

It’s unclear how the injury might affect Wade’s status for Thursday’s series-deciding Game 7. He continued to play Tuesday night after running into Ginobili on a drive to the rim, but his overall numbers for the game were lacking: 14 points on 6-of-15 shooting with four rebounds and four assists.

Considering it’s the final game of the season Thursday regardless of which way it goes, expect Wade to play unless he’s completely incapable. However, the Heat may once again be tasked with winning despite the All-Star guard being less than 100 percent.

The defining stretch of the fourth quarter was the 22-9 run that took San Antonio’s 10-point lead in the third quarter and turned it into a three-point deficit early in the fourth quarter. LeBron had 13 points, two assists, two rebounds, one block and zero turnovers on 6-7 shooting during those eight minutes. The NBA’s MVP had 19 points, eight rebounds, nine assists and six turnovers on 5-19 shooting combined in his other 42 minutes. The rebounds and assists are nice, sure, but the terrible shooting and turnovers are not.

The difference? Wade sat on the bench during that entire eight-minute stretch.

Ginobili, for all of his turn-back-the-clock magic in Game 5, had just delivered an abomination of a Finals performance that saw his team cough-up sure victory thanks to missed free throws, poor rebounding and some clutch shot-making by the Heat in the closing minute of Tuesday night’s game. Palm glued to his face just minutes earlier, a local newscaster asked Ginobili how San Antonio’s ring-clad veterans will re-energize their younger teammates heading into a Game 7:

“I have no clue how we’re going to be re-energized,” Ginobili said, via NBA.com’s live press conference stream. “I’m devastated. But we have to. There’s no Game 8 afterwards.”

After Gregg Popovich’s shocking and borderline reckless transparency following Game 6, Martin Rickman and Seth Rosenthal did some analysis -- with help from Xs and Os expert Jon Bois -- to preview Game 7.

(video via @cjzero)

What’s interesting to consider is how he does it, the style of his performance. Game 6 began like the rest of the series for LeBron: the Spurs paid extra attention to his every move, and with or without the ball, he struggled to get to the rim. San Antonio defenders played softly off of him, and his shot wasn’t dead-eye off of the dribble. There wasn’t a ton of regular ball movement because the Spurs were hitting so many shots, preventing Miami from getting into the frontcourt with some pace. It was all pretty surgical for Miami, and though the Heat remained in the lead or within a possession or two of San Antonio until the late third, LeBron and his teammates couldn’t really do much to show off their power.

But with Wade on the bench in the fourth, LeBron changed totally. The Heat trailed by as many as 13 in the late third and ten in the fourth before James attacked hard. He drove for the rim. Not to break down the Spurs defense and get an open look for a teammate, not to find San Antonio’s weak points and exploit them. He stuck his foot on the pedal and went at the Spurs.

Game 6 of the NBA Finals was one of the best played NBA Finals games ever, and that’s not being hyperbolic. It featured runs, counter-runs, and a hyperventilation-causing finish with Ray Allen drilling a game-tying three to stave off elimination and send the game into overtime, where the Miami Heat would force a Game 7.

But to some -- especially on Twitter -- it will always be the LeBron James headband game.

TV cameras captured them, and Bomani Jones snapped a pic:

It’d be nice to just mock the fans dumb enough to leave over and over and over and over and over again in our heads, but it turns out the scenario actually turned pretty ugly. Miami sports anchor Victor Oquendo was setting up for his post-game live shot and witnessed the scene:

“There’s no target,” he told me earlier in the series. “I don’t aim. If I’m aiming that’s when I’m missing. The way I look at it is just get the ball in the air. You do it over and over again you should never have a target.”

“Once the ball came off the rim, I just knew to get to the three-point line,” Allen said. “We needed a three. Two points isn’t going to cut it. So my mental checklist is really to have my legs ready and underneath me so when the ball comes, if it comes, I was ready to go in the air.”

“We were so close to winning it,” Manu Ginobili said in the media room following the game. “It’s one of the many things I’ll be thinking [Tuesday night]. We’ve got a great coaching staff, great coach. If he did those subs, I’m very sure he thought about it and had many great reasons to do it. He wanted size on the defensive end.”

The criticism will keep coming over the next 48 hours, but in Popovich’s defense, San Antonio turned the ball over late, made costly defensive errors on rotations and failed to match the Heat’s energy at the end of the game. It wasn’t his fault alone. Coaches get a lot of blame when things go wrong, and it’s easy to make the right decisions with the ability of hindsight.

Oof, Manu Ginobili. Oof.

Those photos come from his post-game press conference following a dreadful 2-5, eight-turnover performance in a brutal 103-100 overtime loss. There were also these quotes, via NBA.com’s live stream:

Allen’s three-pointer came with five seconds remaining to send the game into overtime. After a LeBron James miss, Chris Bosh grabbed an offensive rebound and found Allen, who hit the stepback three in the right corner to tie game.

The Spurs had dominated the game through the first three quarters, leading by 10 points after the third quarter. But James, who struggled mightily in the first three quarters, took over in the fourth. He led from the front on offense and defense, serving as the catalyst for easy looks for his teammates. Miami went on a 20-7 run to take a three-point lead with five and a half minutes remaining.

We should all have the utmost faith in Kawhi Leonard by now, but I really didn’t think he was gonna reach the rim on this one. I learned. Mike Miller learned, too.

Yeah, a little smack on the face there, too, but these things happen.

Here, James takes the ball upcourt and stops on the perimeter. He dribbles for about four seconds, then takes a shot without the ball ever leaving his hands. This is a terrible offensive possession for Miami:

It’s still a James dribble drive, but it works because it’s at the end of a possession, not the beginning.

Game 6 will either end with a Spurs championship or a date for a decisive Game 7. Which will it be? Here are three questions that could be early tells:

There are simply no words for what Danny Green is doing here.

LeBron’s legacy will therefore be seen as tarnished in the eyes of many. But is that really fair to him?

Something the great, thoughtful Henry Abbott wrote at TrueHoop on Monday got me thinking about LeBron, 1-3 and the potential for a different narrative.