by Steven Adams
In the second round of the playoffs, our series against the Clippers wasn’t harder than the Grizzlies, just different. The Clippers played a similar game to us, with fast transitions. But, at the same time, they had DeAndre Jordan and Glen “Big Baby” Davis on the inside so their big game was strong.
Commentators like to say a series gets interesting once a team loses at home. We had home advantage again and lost the first game 122–105, so I guess the series was interesting from the start. It was the first game and Chris Paul shot 85 percent from the field. When someone is on fire like that, there really isn’t much you can do. We took the loss and regrouped for game two. With our second home game, and a good kick up the arse, we won an up-and-down game 112–101.
Heading back to Staples Center in Los Angeles, where I had had my first start, we carried our momentum with us and won game three 118–112. KD had been top-scoring most games with at least 30 points, but Russ was always right there. In game three, I got a few more minutes and was able to bring down a team-high nine rebounds. Leading 2–1 and coming off an away win, we had all the momentum going into game four. Unfortunately, we took all that momentum and turned it into quite an impressive choke.
Nine minutes into the game we were up 29–7. The Clippers were shooting well below 50 percent, while it felt like we couldn’t miss. The first thing that happened to me when I was subbed in at the end of the first quarter was I nearly got knocked out by Glen Davis on an attempted dunk. I saw stars for a second but was otherwise fine. I’ll still happily blame the hit for my two missed free throws, though. In six minutes of play I was called for three fouls, but there were fouls being called for everything as tensions ran high. Davis and I were going at it. Blake Griffin was getting pissed at me for trying to get rebounds. I wanted to stay in. I felt like I was in the middle of a fight that I had to finish. But it wasn’t even halftime, and three fouls is three fouls. So I was out and back on the bench as the Clippers cut our lead to four.
Starting the second half with a 10-point lead was handy but clearly not enough to get comfortable, especially when the lead had been 22. The game was one of the most physical of the season and I was sitting on the bench, itching to get back in and hustle. Near the end of the third quarter, I got my chance and went straight to work trying to make Jordan ineffective. We went into the fourth quarter up by 12 and shooting way better than them. People should have been safe betting on us to win after three quarters leading consistently. And those same people would have lost their money.
I was doing well to battle Jordan for every ball, but after two soft foul calls early in the fourth I was back on the bench with five fouls, frustrated. At that point there were eight minutes to go in the game and we were up by 12 again.
With 1 minute and 23 seconds on the clock, the Clippers took the lead for the first time. They held the lead for just 75 seconds the entire game, but they were the only 75 seconds that mattered. After leading by 22 points in the first quarter, we lost 101–99.
We won game five by one point in the final moments, but it will probably be remembered only for a controversial last minute of officiating from the refs. We were trailing by seven points with 49 seconds remaining and ended up winning the game, which basically every Clippers fan thought was thanks to some unfair calls going our way. The Clippers coach, Doc Rivers, didn’t even try to hide his anger after the game and ended up getting fined for criticizing the refs.
All I’ll say is KD still had to make a clutch three for us to win that game. We still had to make a steal and get a fast break layup to win that game. And Russ still had to make three ridiculous pressure free throws to take the lead and win that game. As for the controversial out-of-bounds call given to us that everyone says went off our guy Reggie Jackson’s hand? I couldn’t possibly comment. Reggie was in a three-on-one fast break situation and chose to take it himself instead of passing to KD or Russ. That’s far more controversial to me.
Perk got into foul trouble early in the first quarter of game six and I was in earlier than planned. It didn’t start well. I’d been working hard on having soft hands and not fumbling passes and rebounds, but I fumbled two almost immediately. I tried to throw the ball off Chris Paul and out-of-bounds, but he caught it. Then he did the exact same thing to me and I couldn’t catch it. The only thing that wasn’t frustrating me was my shooting, which was safe. I led the team in scoring in the first quarter. But that changed quickly once KD got going.
We still trailed for the whole of the first half, sometimes by as many as 16 points. We’d make a run and get back to within five and then take our foot off the pedal for a minute and suddenly we were down by 15 again. Playing catch-up for two quarters drains you. But then Nick came on court and everything turned around.
When a team plays for long enough, they develop a sixth sense of each other on the court. During my rookie season, I hadn’t gotten to the point of knowing where everyone was all the time, but fairly quickly I developed a shorthand with Nick and Perk. When any two of us were on the court together, we knew what to do.
Nick subbed in and we got straight to work shutting down the Clippers’ scoring and trimming their 15-point lead. Nick was getting charges and I was getting blocks. We were always in the right spots at the right time. I’d gamble on defense, knowing he had my back, and then he would do the same and I’d have his back. Knowing that you can afford to play aggressive defense because your teammate is covering for you makes all the difference to getting stops. Nick and I did that, and they just couldn’t score. It shut them down completely.
Then, going into the final quarter, I got a defensive rebound, sent it down the court where Nick had planted up in the corner, and he sank a three right on the buzzer to draw the game. The Clippers had led the entire game up to that point and never led again. We won the game 104–98 and the series 4–2. We were going to the Western Conference finals.
That game became mine and Nick’s claim to fame. His because of that crucial shot and mine because I played 40 minutes, the longest I’d ever played in any NBA game, let alone a playoff match. I’d never been as exhausted on the court as I was in the final quarter of that game. But even though I felt like I was dying, it was mean because I knew I was making a very real and sustained impact for my team. Doing some good stuff in a few minutes off the bench was cool, but playing nearly the entire game in a huge win was something else. We talk about that game even now to all the young fellas.
The San Antonio Spurs had won their Western Conference semifinals 4–1, so they had an extra day of rest before the first game of our series. Going into game 96 of the season, that extra 24 hours helps the body recover a lot. But where it makes all the difference is in having more time to study your opponent. We needed two weeks to strategize for the 2013/14 Spurs, not two days.
Every single playoff team believes they can win the championship. If you don’t expect to be the best, you shouldn’t be playing in the NBA. While we fully intended to win both the conference finals and the championship finals, Serge had just been ruled out of the first game with a calf injury and the Spurs were the clear favorites to take out both the series and the championship.
Their team was… I don’t even know. It was almost stupid. They were playing a different game from everyone else. The whole squad was old, but in a good way. Kawhi Leonard was pretty much their youngest player and he’s two years older than me. Playing against the Spurs in 2014 was like playing against a team who had been together for a decade, which for their big three—Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker—was actually true. I love all those guys because they just seem like really chill, nice guys and playing against them in the conference finals was the closest I ever got to buzzing out in an NBA game. Not to mention they had my idol Pop for a coach and legendary Kiwi Sean Marks as assistant coach.
If you don’t know who Sean Marks is, do yourself a favor and look him up. Sean was the first New Zealand–born player to ever play in the NBA after being drafted forty-fourth by the New Yo
rk Knicks in 1998. He played 11 seasons in the NBA and averaged 2.8 points per game. They don’t let just anyone averaging two points per game stick around in the league that long. Clearly, he was bringing something else to the table, and that was his brains. As soon as Sean retired, he joined the Spurs’ front office as an assistant in basketball operations, before becoming assistant coach for three seasons, then assistant general manager. He is now the general manager for the Brooklyn Nets. That sort of career trajectory is legendary and something I aim for.
I never thought I’d be some sort of superstar in the league, I just wanted to have a job in basketball for as long as possible. Most people would have no idea who Sean Marks is and yet he’s been in the league for 20 years and has two championship rings, one as a player and one as a coach. That’s some dream shit right there.
It was the first series opener we didn’t have home advantage for, and it showed. The Thunder franchise had never won an away first game before, and we didn’t change history that night, losing convincingly 122–105. The Spurs were just unstoppable. We were a good defensive team, but they had never been like any other team to defend against. Most teams have one, maybe two guys who are their stars and will take most of their shots. It’s quite straightforward defending against them because you just worry about shutting that one guy down. If someone is having a great game and shooting 80 percent, you just worry about him. Only having to be aware of one player means that everyone has time to set themselves up on defense and be in the right position to fast break as soon as that shot is taken.
The Spurs weren’t like that. They had so much movement and rotation both on and off the ball that it forced defenders to switch constantly. Switching is fine if you can switch back. But when the ball is constantly moving, it’s hard to get back into your defensive positions without creating a gap to score through. And that’s how you end up with guards trying to box out bigs and being out of position for a fast break. Teams can stuff up their opponent’s offensive systems by confusing their defense, and the Spurs were the masters of ruining a defensive system.
“Timmy D” Duncan put on a masterclass of a big-man game. When I subbed in for my short stint on the court, I expected Playoff Timmy to not be as nice as Regular Season Timmy and I was ready to have a physical fight the whole time, like I’d had first with Randolph and then with Jordan. I even figured I just might be able to get an edge on him since I was 20 and he was 38. Surely, I could use my size and speed to shut him down. But that’s the thing with legends. They don’t need to be the fastest or the strongest. Timmy (I call him Timmy cos apparently that’s what his friends call him) knew exactly where to be and how to plant and what angles to use to make my size and strength ineffective. You can’t shut someone down if you have no idea what they’re doing.
Even his trash talk was amazing. Amazing because there was none of it. I was ready for some veteran, aged-like-fine-wine insults. Instead he looked at me and asked how I was doing and said something about it being my first playoffs. I was shocked and didn’t really know how to respond to such a nice guy. Then he turned around and scored 27 points on us. To be honest, I would have preferred it if he had just punched me in the face.
If game one was bad, game two was worse. It was in San Antonio again and we just couldn’t get into a groove on their home turf. The Spurs adjusted by shutting down KD and Russ, who were both averaging over 30 points per game. In game two they each scored 15 and no one else was able to step up and take over the scoring. We lost 112–77, one of the biggest playoff wins for the Spurs in franchise history. I felt like I’d done better marking Duncan and keeping him to just 14 points, but it didn’t really matter when Danny Green shot seven three-pointers. It’s hard to stop that sort of fire.
We got Serge back for game three and he made sure everyone knew it by scoring six of our first eight points and bringing everybody up with him. Having Serge back and finally being back home at Chesapeake Arena made all the difference and we got our first win of the series, 106–97.
In game four I dunked on Tim Duncan. That’s all that matters. Well, actually, us winning that game was way more important, but for all my mates back home in New Zealand, me dunking on Tim Duncan was all they cared about. I was still building up my confidence to try dunking on anyone and I don’t think I would have dared to go up against Duncan like that—it was more luck than anything. I got a pass in the low post and thought I had a clear lane to the basket so I jumped up for the dunk. Duncan, being as sneaky as he is, appeared out of nowhere to contest it and, because I was already well on my way, I went right by him and got the two points. It was a bit more dunking next to him than dunking on him, but I’ll take it.
Game four was ours too. It’s hard to overstate how much of a boost you get from playing in front of a home crowd, but it’s honestly massive, especially in the middle of the country where people live and breathe through their sports teams. The Spurs and Thunder have similar diehard fan bases so we knew how hard it was playing in front of each other’s crowds.
Bringing the series back to 2–2 we realized that when we could keep Duncan from controlling the game, we had much better chances of winning. And that meant a lot of work for me.
Duncan top-scored in game five and the Spurs embarrassed us in front of their home crowd, 117–89. We stayed in the game until halftime, when we just crashed and ended up missing all our three-point attempts after that and shooting badly in the paint too. It’s probably worth noting that while we had three players score in double figures that game, the Spurs had six. That’s just what happens when you have players like Ginobili coming off the bench.
At one point during the game I glanced over at the Spurs bench to see Duncan and Sean Marks talking and laughing with each other. Two of my heroes sharing a joke just a few meters away from me. I almost asked them what was so funny, but I didn’t want it to be weird.
We flew home that night one loss away from elimination but still confident that we could force a game seven, because every game up to that point had been won by the home team. Game six was in OKC.
Neither team led by more than 10 points the whole game, which is about as close a game as you can get in the NBA. We held the lead throughout most of the first half, but Boris Diaw and Ginobili came off the bench for the Spurs and absolutely smashed it. They pulled ahead, held their lead, and looked all but through. Then with seconds to go we found a way to tie the scores, sending the game into overtime.
In the middle of overtime, while we were all chewing our warm-up tops to shreds on the bench, I suddenly realized I had a front-row seat to one of the great basketball spectacles. I was seeing icons from two different eras of the NBA going up against each other. There were completely different styles of play and yet it was such a close match-up. The privilege of being part of that wasn’t lost on me. With five seconds to go in overtime and us down by five, the starting five were subbed out and I went in for the final play of my rookie season.
Our bench scored only five points in the entire game, and all five of those points were by the veteran Derek Fisher. Want to guess how many points the Spurs’ bench scored? Fifty-one. Five players—four starters and Derek—scored points for our team while 10 players got on the board for the Spurs. That’s every single player except one. Those two stats on their own pretty much sum up the game and the series. Russ and KD could win a lot of games on their own, and they had done so all season. But when you face a team with a bench so strong they can almost outscore the starters, it’s just too much. Our two superstars needed their bench to help them and we didn’t, not that night. It’s a testament to how incredible KD and Russ were that we almost won that game despite everything. We lost 112–107 and the Spurs went on to beat the Miami Heat 4–1 to become the 2014 NBA Champions.
The one tiny good thing to come out of that night was that I got to hug Pop. Only at the end of a playoff series do teams get to shake hands and talk to each other. I learned this the hard way in one of the first games of the season aga
inst the Clippers (always the Clippers!) when I tried to shake Byron Mullens’ hand and he just walked away. The only thing worse than being left hanging is being left hanging on national TV. So I shook my own hand and made a note to never try that again.
Being knocked out of the finals was heartbreaking, but at the same time I was a rookie who had been able to play a lot in an amazing playoff run with one of the best teams in the league. I wasn’t exactly sulking. As we went through and said good luck to all the Spurs guys for their final series rematch against the Heat, I dialed in on Pop and made sure he didn’t leave before I could embrace him. When I finally got my arms around him… mate, it was beautiful. I just held that legendary man and got a quick sniff of his hair. He smelled lovely. Don’t act like you wouldn’t do exactly the same thing if you had the chance.
As I made my way off the court I spotted Derek Fisher looking around with a devastated look on his face. After 18 seasons in the league, he’d decided that one was going to be his last. We had all planned to send him out with another ring, but we fell short. As he looked around, the home crowd kept cheering and showing the love they’d shown us all season. I watched him for a little bit and wondered if I’d be able to have such a long, incredible career. Eighteen seasons, five championships with the Lakers, all-time leader in playoff games played, and a crucial member of our team both on and off the court in his final season. He’d taught me so much about how to survive in the NBA, and if I last half as long as him, I’ll be happy.
Derek waved goodbye to the crowd for the last time as a professional basketball player while I walked out of the stadium knowing I was just getting started.