Tony Parker believes Celtics can learn valuable lessons from 2014 Spurs

The sequence took seven seconds. It featured six passes.

All five Spurs players on the court touched the ball. Only one, Patty Mills, dribbled it. He drove baseline, then found Manu Ginóbili cutting to the hoop for a layup. Tim Duncan was sitting on the bench, but it didn’t matter. The 2014 Spurs played beautiful basketball consistently, not just when their Hall of Fame big man was in the game.

If that team didn’t play the prettiest brand of basketball ever, it ranks high on the short list of contenders. Tony Parker believes his team reached basketball nirvana because of an NBA Finals loss the previous season. As great as San Antonio teams were regularly during that time, Parker said motivation from a crushing loss to the Heat in 2013 drove the Spurs to what likely was the best hoops of their golden era.

“For the Celtics,” Parker said recently, “that’s what they have to do.”

Ime Udoka, an assistant coach for that Spurs team, wasted no time delivering a similar message to the Celtics. Immediately after the final loss to the Warriors, Udoka told his players they would need to use the experience to propel them forward. He wanted the Celtics to learn from Golden State’s consistency and IQ.

“He was with us in those years,” Parker said. “So he can definitely take some stuff from what we had to go through. I played with him as teammates and had him as a coach. He’s been through everything with us, so he knows better than anybody how to bounce back from a tough NBA Finals loss.”

Of course, the Spurs were in a different situation then. Though Kawhi Leonard was just beginning to come into his own, the rest of the core had already won several championships together. San Antonio didn’t need to learn how to win at the highest level. If anything, the danger for the Spurs was that their window might have passed. By the time the 2014 finals started, Duncan (37), Ginóbili (36) and Parker (32) were deep into their careers. They needed to respond after a brutal loss to the younger, loaded Heat. Parker said he thought about the way the 2013 finals ended “every day.”

“Especially the way we lost, it was crazy in 2013,” he said.

The Spurs lost Game 6 only after Ray Allen forced overtime with one of the most memorable shots in NBA history. After that heartbreaker, San Antonio also dropped a close Game 7.

“We were up five with 28 seconds (in Game 6), and we were winning the championship,” Parker said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, we win that game. But we went to overtime. And we lost Game 6, we lost Game 7.”

In Las Vegas, where he also checked out the World Series of Poker and watched his younger brother, TJ, on the Bucks’ summer-league staff, Parker reflected on how the pain from that season pushed the Spurs forward. The Celtics didn’t have the title yanked out of their hands in a similar fashion but should have regrets from their series against Golden State. With a five-point lead in Game 4, Boston had a chance to take a commanding 3-1 advantage. Instead, the Celtics scored six points over the final 7:32 to lose Game 4 by 10. After proceeding to drop the next two games, they watched the Warriors celebrate the championship inside TD Garden.

Unlike the Spurs, who were trying to extend a long reign, the Celtics hope their trip to the finals marked the beginning of their journey as contenders. They know that what happened last season guarantees nothing moving forward. The returning starters all lived through the 2018-19 season, during which bad chemistry set fire to the most talented team Brad Stevens ever coached. The Celtics intend to build off their success this time. They believe a similar formula to last season’s should work again, this time with a few new tweaks, including the additions of Malcolm Brogdon and Danilo Gallinari.

To compete for a title again, the Celtics will need to buy back into the habits that charged their midseason turnaround. From Jan. 1 through the end of the regular season, they ranked fifth in assists per 100 possessions after ranking 23rd before then. Knowing they had too many offensive lapses during the playoffs, they want to lean even further into the concept of team ball. After the playoff run concluded, Stevens said he and Udoka both want to see the team play with “a little bit more movement.”

Not many rosters have ever leaned into team ball quite like the 2014 Spurs. They responded to finals failure by winning 62 regular-season games and toppling the Heat in a championship rematch. Parker said the finals loss the previous season helped produce San Antonio’s beautiful style that year.

“For me, the way we lost in 2013, it created what happened in 2014,” Parker said. “Maybe one of the best finals in NBA history. Maybe the best Spurs basketball that we played. In 2014, the way we played, the passing game, everything, we were maybe at the highest level of my whole career. It started with a tough loss in 2013.”