Green, Neal Scorch The Heat

SAN ANTONIO — When Danny Green stepped onto the Spurs’ newly minted media scaffold, built in a chilly corner of the AT&T Center’s event-level floor to accommodate the extra media the Finals bring, he didn’t know what to do. A Spanish writer raised his hand so the moderator would call on him for the first question, but Green took it as a friendly wave and shot back an awkward smirk. After a moment of deafening silence, a nervous Green tried to kick off the conversation himself, offering a quick “What’s up?” to the crowd of reporters.

Green had never been on that stage before, or any other like it. He has been waived three times in his career — twice by the Spurs and once by the LeBron-era Cavaliers — and had his confidence sapped by ill-timed shooting slumps in each of the past two postseasons, so he’s just happy the Spurs gave him another chance. His lack of composure during rough stretches, most notably when he shot 4 of 23 from three in last year’s Western Conference finals, made him something of a liability to a coach like Gregg Popovich, whose fundamental principle is to trust the process no matter the result.

But here we are, a year removed from the worst shooting stretch of his life against the Thunder, and Green is now a legitimate candidate, if not the favorite, for 2013 NBA Finals MVP. According to Popovich, it took a pair of stern but caring head coaches — Popovich himself and Green’s college coach, Roy Williams — calling Green this offseason and preaching the importance of staying confident no matter how many shots he missed.

Confidence is now the least of Green’s problems. The 25-year-old shooting guard has been unconscious from the outside in the Finals, his conviction growing with every release, and he’s even expanded his game to include a couple of off-the-dribble pull-up threes that found nothing but net. Through three games, Green is shooting an implausible 16 of 23 from 3-point range, including a perfect 5 of 5 in Game 2 and 7 of 9 in Game 3. When you go to a game with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili on the floor, you expect to be wowed in some way, but never did I think my jaw would hit the floor because Danny Green was putting on one of the best shooting exhibitions in NBA Finals history.

Thanks in large part to Green’s game-high 27 points, the Spurs blew out the Heat 113-77 last night to take a 2-1 series lead.

The Spurs probably don’t win Game 1 without Green’s four 3-pointers, and Game 3 would have been much closer without his second-half explosion. Throw in the phenomenal defense Green has played on LeBron, both one-on-one and as a help defender, and I believe he’s been San Antonio’s most valuable player in this series. With Parker, Ginobili and Tim Duncan all struggling offensively, Green has stepped up as the series’ leading scorer at 18.7 points per game, which, I’m sure, is exactly how we all saw this playing out.

About the only thing more surprising than Green’s emergence as much more than a role player in this series was Gary Neal’s emergence as much more than a role player in Game 3. Green gave the game its grand finale, but it was Neal who put on a fireworks show in the first half. Neal had 14 first-half points, including 4-of-6 shooting from downtown, and he played a key part in the most important sequence of the game: the closing minutes of the first half.

Neal hit a 3 with 3:27 left in the second quarter to put the Spurs up 11, their largest lead of the series at that point. The Heat answered with a 12-1 run that tied the game with 26 seconds left in the half.

Then the Spurs pulled off the best two-for-one I’ve seen all season.

Parker somehow got a running, fading three from the corner to go, getting the shot off with two seconds to spare to keep the two-for-one alive. LeBron attacked a bit earlier on the other end, but his foray to the rim, like all of his others in Game 3, came up empty, this one stuffed by a tremendous Green block. Duncan gathered the loose ball and tossed it ahead to Parker, who quickly found Neal sprinting up the floor. Neal was so eager to get a shot up that he wasn’t even on balance when he let it fly.

On this night, balance didn’t matter.

Just like that, Miami’s momentum was gone. Instead of heading to the locker room content that they had absorbed San Antonio’s best punch without losing ground, the Heat walked off staring at the floor.

Neal is Green’s reclamation brother. Neal said he and Green have shown up to practice two hours early ever since they became Spurs, doing everything in their power to earn the coaching staff’s respect and trust. Neither was highly touted coming out of college and neither was expected to do much, but by working their butts off, they put themselves in a position to succeed.

Green was a second-round pick out of North Carolina, but Neal wasn’t even seen as an NBA prospect coming out of Towson. He went overseas instead, making stops in Turkey and Spain before settling in Treviso, Italy. Neal said he was comfortable financially with his Lega Basket earnings, but in July 2010, two events changed his life forever.

First, Neal married his wife, Leah, on July 10, and the two immediately began planning a honeymoon to Atlantis. Around the same time, Neal’s agent called to tell him the Spurs were interested and wanted him at a mini-camp, which eventually led to a spot on San Antonio’s Summer League team. Neal and his wife decided he should chase the NBA opportunity, something he had never seriously considered before. If things didn’t work out, Atlantis and a solid career in Europe would still be waiting for them.

There would be no return trip to Treviso. San Antonio’s front office saw something in the undersized combo guard that convinced them he’d fit their system, and by July 22 he had a three-year deal. As a shot-first player without elite playmaking ability, with some poor defensive habits and less-than-ideal size, Neal didn’t seem like the perfect match. But for all the ups and downs of his tenure in San Antonio, last night alone made it worth it.

Neal went 9 of 17 from the field and 6 of 10 from deep in Game 3, giving the Spurs 24 points off the bench; Parker, Duncan and Ginobili combined for 25. He isn’t a perfect player, but he has never struggled with confidence the way Green has, so, for better or worse, he’ll hoist any semi-open look he gets.

In Game 3, it didn’t matter whether Neal was wide open, contested, three feet beyond the arc or driving into the lane for a pretty floater. It was all working, because he never stopped working.

The Spurs had a whopping 29 assists in Game 3 and drilled a Finals-record 16 3-pointers. San Antonio moved the ball beautifully, whipping it from side to side and forcing the Heat to rotate all over the floor until someone was left open for a split second. Without the attention to detail that carried them in Game 2, the Heat let the Spurs turn the game into a rout. The more Miami has to move defensively, the better the chance it makes a mistake, and in Game 3 the Spurs had the Heat moving more often than a military family.

When Green was asked about some of the crazier developments in this series — outscoring LeBron, for one, and landing on the podium, for another — he was taken aback.

“I never thought I’d be up here talking to you guys,” Green said.

Neither did we, Danny.