We know all about the Spurs and the Heat basketball-wise. Let’s talk about the other stuff.
Via: Darren Abate / AP
It's settled: Miami Heat vs. San Antonio Spurs in the 2013 NBA Finals. Two basketball teams, playing basketball, trying to win a trophy of a gold basketball. There's already been plenty of actual basketball talk — here's a sample: the Heat are better if Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade play better! the Spurs need Kawhi Leonard to be huge! LeBron James is very good! — so right now, it's time to cover what could be the deciding factor of the matchup: the INTANGIBLES.
THE CITIES
San Antonio: The Alamo is in San Antonio. This is the only thing I know about San Antonio. If you told me that San Antonio was run by a bear-king and that everyone met in the town square at 3 pm every day to drink iced coffee, I wouldn't believe you, but I wouldn't NOT believe you. I think the rest of the country feels similarly, possibly explaining why Finals that include the Spurs average so many fewer viewers. It must be tough to be the fourth city in a state like Texas; everyone's got so much state pride, but it all goes to Austin and Dallas and Houston, and San Antonio's kind of the neglected kid brother. It's not your fault, San Antonio: you're beautiful.
Miami: During the one week in my life I've spent in Miami, I saw more Bentleys, Maseratis, and Maybachs than I've seen before or since combined. Not only did these cars exist, though — they were all just sitting in the front yards of perfectly ordinary-looking homes, idling, clean as scalpels. I then went out and paid $12 for a Corona. Fuck Miami.
Advantage: San Antonio
THE TEAM NAMES
Spurs: A remnant of an era in which men wore cowboy boots so they could drive their heels into the sides of horses, spurs don't have much place in contemporary America, which features comparatively fewer men on horses. They also seem like a mean thing to poke a horse with, although I'm not intimately familiar with the functionality of spurs or horses, so please forgive me if that's a mischaracterization. I'm just not sure that an American in 2013 has a place for spurs, but they do call to mind the great Argentinian poem El Gaucho Martin Fierro.
Heat: Without heat, there would be no Bagel Bites.
Advantage: Heat
Via: Eric Gay / AP