SAN ANTONIO — Things were not quite supposed to play out this way. The San Antonio Spurs were not supposed to be one loss away from elimination in the Western Conference semifinals.
San Antonio won a remarkable 67 games during the regular season, and its excellence this season was overshadowed only because the Golden State Warriors effervescently compiled a league-record 73 wins. In any case, these were the two best teams, destined to fight for the conference crown.
Yet that foreordained matchup is in peril now, because San Antonio finds itself fighting for its playoff life, trailing the best-of-seven conference semifinal series, three games to two, to the Oklahoma City Thunder.