My last post was written the day before the tenth anniversary of the Spurs’ 2014 playoff run began on April 20, 2014. Today’s post is the day before the tenth anniversary of the end of the first round of those playoffs — May 4, 2014.

The 2014 Western Conference was a beast. Seven teams won 50 or more games, The Spurs first round opponent, the eighth place Dallas Mavericks, won 49 and had won the NBA championship only three years earlier. Not surprisingly, the first round of the Western Conference playoffs produced four battles between evenly matched, excellent teams. Three of the four series went to seven games, and the other went six games. Even though each series was close, the higher seeded team prevailed in each.

In the series we care most about, the Dallas Mavericks gave the Spurs all they could handle, and more. As previously mentioned in my last post, the teams split the first two games in San Antonio, meaning the teams headed to Dallas for Game Three:

If they had known what was in store in Game Three, the Spurs may have not gotten on that bus. Game Three was the “Vince Carter Game”. The 37-year old Carter, who no longer started for the Mavs, drilled a corner jumper at the buzzer for a 109-108 Mavs win. The shot came off an in-bounds play with only 1.7 seconds left. For those of you brave enough to re-live that moment — and I don’t blame you if you want to skip it — here is Carter’s shot:

That shot put the Mavs up 2-1 in the series, and Pounding the Rock writers were NOT pleased. Michael Erler’s summary included these nuggets:

“Diaw has been a disaster defensively. He gives up too much room to Nowitzki on jumpers, like he’s afraid he’s gonna get blown by on drives. He doesn’t have nearly Splitter’s length. He doesn’t rebound or contest anything at the rim.”

”The defense as a whole was atrocious all game, allowing 53 percent shooting and 39 percent from three. The Spurs came away with a stop and a board just four times in the whole quarter.”

”But my single biggest concern is with Tony Parker, who was a flat out disaster in the second half. The offense simply went into a dark cave and hid while he was in there.”

“If anything is gonna derail the Spurs season, it’s Parker. I wonder if he has the stamina to put two good halves together, let alone two good games. He just can’t be healthy — or he’s turned the corner in age where he just can’t be what we want him to be anymore.”

As a reminder, Parker led the Spurs in scoring and assists during the season, the defense was sixth best in the league, and (spoiler alert) Boris Diaw wound up playing a key role later in the playoffs.

Game Four was also in Dallas, with the Spurs in danger of going down 3-1. Thankfully, the Spurs pulled out the win in another defensive game, prevailing 93-89. That win was keyed by a 32-13 second quarter. The defense was much better, as the Spurs held the Mavs to 38% shooting overall, 29% from three — and crucially, 18-28 on free throws. There must have been a lot of coughing and burping by the Spurs “defenders” on those Dallas free throws. Put another way, if the Mavs had missed only 5 free throws instead of 10, I might not be writing this piece today.