SAN ANTONIO — When the San Antonio Spurs reached the pinnacle for the first of five times and sparked this era that wouldn't end, the player who would hoist the 2014 NBA Finals MVP trophy was an eight-year-old growing up in the Southern California town of Moreno Valley.
It's that sustained success, more than anything else, that makes their run so remarkable.
Bob Donnan, USA TODAY Sports
Spurs forward Tim Duncan celebrates making a basket during Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
Fifteen years later, coach Gregg Popovich and his band of old men did it again on Sunday night inside a raucous AT&T Center — with a whole lot of help from 22-year-old Kawhi Leonard. Their 104-87 Game 5 closeout win in the NBA Finals — one in which Leonard had 22 points and 10 rebounds — not only ended the Miami Heat's three-peat bid but polished the already-shiny legacy of the big man whose arrival from Wake Forest in 1997 started this whole special run, Tim Duncan.
BOX SCORE: Spurs 104, Heat 87
SPURS: They will be fine next year
Leonard was asked if he saw that team that started it all.
" I don't think I watched the finals when I was 7 years old," he said. "I was busy playing kid games, running around."
Duncan remembers all of the titles. But called this one the most special. In part, because of how last year's run ended with the Spurs blowing a lead late in Game 6 and then losing Game 7. He had gone as far as to say after winning this year's Western Conference Finals that he was confident the Spurs would win it this time.
"It makes last year OK," Duncan said on the court after the game. That loss is the only one in six Finals for the Spurs. They won championships in 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2007 before this year's.
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