The 2007 NBA Finals were the championship series of the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) 2006-07 season, as well as the summation of the postseason. The Western Conference champion San Antonio Spurs swept the Eastern Conference champion Cleveland Cavaliers 4-0 in this best-of-seven playoff series. This was Cleveland’s first appearance in the NBA Finals, and San Antonio’s fourth. Tony Parker was labelled the MVP of the series. The series, which aired on ABC under the ESPN on ABC branding, had the lowest television ratings in NBA Finals history until 2020.
This marked the last sweep in the NBA Finals until 2018, and it also happened to involve the Cavaliers on the brink of losing. This was also the last finals until 2019 in which a team made the first ever appearance in the NBA Finals. The Finals were played in a 2-3-2 format, with the initial two and the last two games hosted at the home court of the team with home court advantage.
After conducting experiments in the early years, the NBA returned to its original format for the Finals in 1985. The other postseason followed a 2-2-1-1-1 format. On June 7, 2007, the Western Conference title holder San Antonio Spurs took on the Eastern Conference champion Cleveland Cavaliers in a best-of-seven series. The San Antonio Spurs had home court advantage because they had a stronger preseason win-loss record.
2007 Western Conference Semi-finals – Suns vs. Spurs
The 2007 Western Conference Semi-Finals match beat out heated competitors the Phoenix Suns and the San Antonio Spurs in what some media outlets asserted were the true 2007 NBA Finals that year, in what would be the most contentious series between the two to date. The popular Phoenix Suns and the small-market San Antonio Spurs opened the series with a 111-106 Spurs win after a confrontation between Steve Nash and Tony Parker, with Nash suffering a deep cut on his nose that forced him to sit out for a good portion of Game 1. Following the Suns’ dominating 101-81 performance in Game 2, the Spurs would finish Game 3 with a 108-101 victory over the Suns and Manu Ginóbili would have a bruised, black eye after being pricked by Shawn Marion. However, the series might well reach a tipping point near the end of Game 4.
Robert Horry of the Spurs clashed with Steve Nash throughout a play and pushed Nash into the scorer’s table mid-court in the final minute of Game 4, which the Suns won 104-98 to tie the series. During the altercation, Raja Bell of the Suns attempted to assist his teammates, but was stopped by the referees and players present, who included Amar’e Stoudemire and Boris Diaw, who were on the team’s bench at the time.
As a result of Horry and Nash’s heated argument, not only would Horry receive a two-game disqualification for his upsurge, but Diaw and Stoudemire would also be reprimanded for Game 5, with the only rule that league commissioner David Stern said they violated at the time being leaving the bench during an altercation.
The suspensions would be the Suns’ undoing near the end of the season. Despite leading for the majority of Game 5 at home, the Suns lost 88-85, and then lost Game 6 and the series in San Antonio 114-106, trailing by as many as 20 points in the third quarter at one point regardless the return of Stoudemire and Diaw. The decision on their suspensions was further questioned and criticised in 2009, after a similar situation occurred with the Boston Celtics, despite the fact that certain key players on their team did not receive similar suspensions.
The decision on their suspensions was further questioned and criticised in 2009, after a similar scenario happened with the Boston Celtics, despite the fact that only certain key players on their team did not receive similar suspensions. Tim Donaghy, one of the referees involved in this series, was engaged in a match fixing scandal that caused fixups on certain NBA games and playoff series in the aftermath of the 2007 Playoffs. During a 2011 interview, he admitted that he thought the Suns were the stronger team that season, but that the series was poorly umpired from start to finish.
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