784: Steve Kerr's Plan

The next day, the headlines of major sports outlets were all photos of the Grizzlies players piling on top of one another in celebration on the court.

Link's incredible game-winner with 1.4 seconds left, following his rebound-and-reverse layup against the Big Three's defense and his game-winning shot against the Thunder earlier this season, once again received the treatment of being replayed endlessly on television.

Another particularly popular photo showed Popovich's despondent expression as he was interviewed at the postgame press conference.

The old man, who had always been brimming with confidence, showed signs of weariness after this loss.

This heartbreaking one-point defeat seemed even more devastating than the double-digit loss in Game 1.

The Spurs had done everything they possibly could, and Danny Green had already unleashed every last bit of his strength.

Yet in the final 1.4 seconds, all that effort had gone up in smoke. It was undeniably a crushing blow.

Link's shot with 1.4 seconds remaining also made the series score 2-0.

People generally agreed that a team was doomed only once it fell behind 3-0. But in truth, being down 0-2 was not much better.

Looking through NBA history, the odds of coming back from a 0-2 deficit were only 6%. In Spurs history, they had fallen behind 0-2 twelve times, and were eliminated in eleven of them—a losing rate as high as 91.7%!

The Spurs' only comeback from a 0-2 deficit came in the 2007-08 season. As the defending champions that year, the Spurs ran into serious trouble as early as the Western Conference semifinals. They faced the Hornets, who had just risen to prominence because of Paul, and lost the first two games by 19 and 18 points respectively—both blowouts.

But once they returned home, the Spurs turned the tide, launching a desperate counterattack