Recap
The 2013–14 NBA season was the 68th season of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The regular season began on Tuesday, October 29, 2013, with the Indiana Pacers hosting a game against the Orlando Magic followed by the 2012–13 NBA champions Miami Heat hosting a game against the Chicago Bulls followed by the Los Angeles Lakers hosting a game against the Los Angeles Clippers. The 2014 NBA All-Star Game was played on February 16, 2014, at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans. Cleveland's Kyrie Irving won the NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Award. The regular season ended on April 16, 2014, and the playoffs began on Saturday, April 19, 2014, and ended on June 15, 2014, with the San Antonio Spurs defeating the Miami Heat in five games to win the 2014 NBA Finals.
The regular season began on Tuesday, October 29, 2013, with the Indiana Pacers hosting a game against the Orlando Magic. The regular season ended on Wednesday, April 16, 2014. The season featured the unveiling of national television games such as on Christmas Day along with Chicago Bulls at Brooklyn Nets, Oklahoma City Thunder at New York Knicks, Miami Heat at Los Angeles Lakers, Houston Rockets at San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Clippers at Golden State Warriors, along with other highly anticipated games.
For the first time since 1984, the NBA Finals were played in a 2–2–1–1–1 format (the higher seed hosts Games 1, 2, 5, and 7, the lower seed hosts Games 3, 4, and 6). They were also the first playoffs overseen by Commissioner Adam Silver.
The Spurs continued the longest active playoff streak in the NBA at 17 straight appearances. The Toronto Raptors and Washington Wizards made their first playoff appearances since 2008, while the Charlotte Bobcats, in their final playoff appearance before renaming themselves the Hornets, returned after a four-year absence. All three teams from Texas made the playoffs for the first time since 2009. For the first time since 2005, the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks did not qualify for the playoffs in the same year. For the first time since 1994, the Lakers and Celtics missed the playoffs in the same season. In addition, this was the first time in NBA history that the Knicks, Celtics, and Lakers missed the playoffs in the same year (the Celtics last missed the playoffs in 2007) The Denver Nuggets also missed the playoffs for the first time since 2003.
The first round of the 2014 Playoffs is generally considered one of the greatest postseason rounds in NBA history. The first 11 days of the playoffs saw at least one road team win on its opponent's home floor. That ended on April 30 with the Raptors, Spurs, and Houston Rockets all winning at home against the Brooklyn Nets, Dallas Mavericks, and Portland Trail Blazers, respectively. The 24 road wins is an NBA playoffs record for the first round. In addition, the 2014 playoffs featured a record eight first-round games that went into overtime, including four straight between the Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunder (Games 2–5), another NBA record.
Five of the eight first-round series were extended to game sevens. Three of the series, Atlanta Hawks at Indiana Pacers, Memphis Grizzlies at Oklahoma City Thunder, and Golden State Warriors at Los Angeles Clippers, were played on May 3, which marked the first time in NBA history that three Game 7s were played on the same day. Two other game sevens were played on the following day, featuring Dallas at San Antonio and Brooklyn at Toronto. The five game sevens in the first round already tied the record for the most number of game sevens in any NBA playoffs, set in the 1994 NBA Playoffs. However, the NBA only adopted a best-of-seven format for the first round beginning in 2003. The Hawks–Pacers series was the first series to force a Game 7, making this postseason the 15th consecutive postseason to have at least one Game 7. The 1999 NBA Playoffs were the last time a Game 7 wasn't played.
This postseason and the previous year's postseason marked the first time since the 2000 and 2001 playoffs that both number 5 seeds knocked out both number 4 seeds in back-to-back years.
This was the first postseason (and the seventh time since 1972, when the current playoff system was put in place) in which the top two seeds played in the Conference Finals both in the East and the West.
When they defeated Indiana on the road in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals, the Heat set an NBA record by recording their 15th straight playoff series in which they earned at least one road win. The Heat then extended the record to 16 straight road wins in playoff series by winning Game 2 of the NBA Finals in San Antonio.
