SAN ANTONIO — From their low moment in the NBA Finals, back to the top of the league. The San Antonio Spurs turned the rematch with the Miami Heat into no match at all.
The Spurs finished off a dominating run to their fifth NBA championship Sunday night, ending the Heat’s two-year title reign with a 104-87 victory that wrapped up the series in five games.
A year after their heartbreaking seven-game defeat, their only loss in six finals appearances, the Spurs won four routs to deny Miami’s quest for a third straight championship.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it? Manu Ginobili said. “We played at a really high level.”
Kawhi Leonard, named the finals MVP, had 22 points and 10 rebounds for the Spurs. San Antonio added this title to the ones the Spurs won in 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2007. They nearly had another last year, but could not hold off the Heat and lost in seven games.
San Antonio rebounded from an early 16-point deficit by outscoring the Heat 37-13 from the start of the second quarter to midway in the third.
The celebration the Heat canceled last season was on by the early second half Sunday.
LeBron James had 17 first-quarter points to help the Heat get off to a fast start. But it was not enough.
He finished with 31 points and 10 rebounds for the Heat, who lost their spot atop the NBA to the team that had it so long.
The Spurs won four titles in nine years, but had not been back on top since 2007, making Foreigner’s “Feels Like the First Time” and appropriate song choice after the final buzzer.
Tim Duncan and coach Gregg Popovich have been here for all of them, and it was the fourth for Tony Parker and Ginobili, who with Duncan are once again the reigning the Big Three in the NBA.
“Just a great team, and we do it together,” Parker said.
Bosh finished with 13 points and Wade just 11 on 4-of-12 shooting for the Heat, providing James nowhere near the help he needed.
The painful conclusion to last year served as the fuel for this one, powering the Spurs to a 62-win season that topped the NBA and led to a rematch with Miami, the NBA’s first in the finals since Chicago beat Utah in 1997-98.
Round 2 went to the Spurs, but both teams facechallenges to navigate for a rubber match.
San Antonio will face questions — as it has for years — about the age of its core, and if Duncan, Ginobili and Popovich want to stick around.
The Heat will brace for the potential free agency of James, Wade and Bosh, and will need younger, fresher pieces around the three ?All-Stars if they all stay.
But this moment belongs to the Spurs. Playing a methodical style for many years that was predicated on throwing the ball into Duncan made San Antonio respected, but never beloved. The Spurs were TV ratings killers, casual viewers finding them not much fun to watch.
But Popovich opened up the offense a few years ago, making the Spurs an easy-to-like, tough-to-beat group that thrives on ball movement and 3-point shooting.
“You showed the world how beautiful this game is,” Commissioner Adam Silver told the Spurs during the postgame award ceremony.
A decade and a half after winning their first title in 1999, when Duncan was in his second season, the Spurs remain the NBA’s model organization, a small-market team that simply wins big and hardly ever does it with a high draft pick. Instead, the Spurs found players overseas or in other organizations who would fit the Spurs’ way of doing things and mesh with the Duncan, Parker and Ginobili, the winningest trio in postseason history.
That included Leonard, acquired in a draft-night trade with Indiana after playing at San Diego State, and Patty Mills, an Australian national who scored 17 points off the bench.
