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It's an interesting thought experiment.

The Spurs were absolutely dominant in 2014, but some might say that they were driven by the loss the previous year and without it they'd still be contenders but not potentially as good.

The Heat were noticeably breaking down as Wade got even older, hard to see them winning it that year unless LeBron is able to repeat his 2013 RS performance the whole season.

OKC and the Clippers are also in play given both have 2 arguable top 5 players.

What do you guys think?

ardee wrote:It's an interesting thought experiment.

The Spurs were absolutely dominant in 2014, but some might say that they were driven by the loss the previous year and without it they'd still be contenders but not potentially as good.

The Heat were noticeably breaking down as Wade got even older, hard to see them winning it that year unless LeBron is able to repeat his 2013 RS performance the whole season.

OKC and the Clippers are also in play given both have 2 arguable top 5 players.

What do you guys think?

Spurs, or if they're not motivated or whatever, OKC.

Wade was already on one leg in the 2013 playoffs. The heat were physically cooked.

That match-up was the 14th most lopsided finals by SRS-gap since 1980 and the 4th most lopsided finals by postseason VORP (linear correlation with SRS), behind 2001, 2018 and 2002.

It would have been a close call with prime Wade, but what they had that postseason was 0.9 BPM Wade (would tie for 7th best PS VORP on the Spurs) finishing the finals strongly with 2 games averaging 10.5/2.5/2.5 + 3TOs on 35% TS and a 66 ORtg (to be fair, that's still better than Ray Allen's legendary performance in game 6 + 7 of the 2013 finals)

If LeBron had scored 39 points on 95ish% TS every game they would have had the exact same result.

That Heat team was just completely done after years of Riley boot camp, finals runs, constant hate from everywhere, piling up injuries and Spolstra's exhausting defense. They had that one last hurrah with the 2013 win streak, dragged themselves to another title and then basically every single player on that team was done. Even LeBron still seemed off the entire 2015 season.

Meanwhile the Spurs had nicely distributed minutes between 7 guys that would have statistically qualified for a LeBron superteam (postseason BPMs around Kyrie/Love/Bosh career averages)

Spurs repeat though OKC is in play.

I think if the Heat lose 2013 Finals, they trade either Bosh or Wade to try and upgrade. I don't see them standing pat if they lose in 2013. I definitely don't think the Spurs repeat that year. The energy and purpose they had was solely driven by the dramatic loss in 2013. I'd go with either OKC or a re-tooled Heat.

Feel fairly confident it would've been a rematch of the 2012 Finals - would probably guess Thunder over Heat just because of how bad and broken down Wade was in the Finals.

Either Spurs repeat or the Thunder win. As people said, the Heat were washed after 2013. Everyone except Lebron and maybe Bosh was worse in 2014 than 2013.

I love Duncan and the Spurs, but this narrative about the 2013 loss being the impetus for their 2014 run sounds dumb. These guys are paid professionals, not the Hickory high men's team.

Hard for me to think Miami doesn't retool significantly if they lose in 2013

People expected more retooling out of the Butler Heat and it didn’t happen fwiw