I chose the Spurs to win in Six and it isn’t really a basketball reason. Or rather, maybe it is. It’s not easy to explain but what the hell, I’ll give it a go:
The Spurs are a family. The Spurs are one of the most envied teams in the NBA. This is because they operate as a family, with Coach Popovich acting as either strict headmaster or caring father figure. His compassion for his players is so well known the press does not pay attention to it anymore. They are a tight knit group with very few manpower changes that this fact gets overlooked. Other teams that want to implement the Spurs winning ways resort to raiding Popovich’s Assistant Coaches, so coaches like Mike Brown and more recently Mike Budenholzer (who will coach the Hawks) are always receiving job offers, with other teams hoping to implement what the Spurs have into their own system.
A tight knit group in itself does not necessarily translate to good basketball, but it does though lay the foundation for it. A team that acts like a family does away with all of those niggling issues that make groups of people that have to work together so dysfunctional. Issues like jealousy, no one talking to one another, petty fights, ego etc., that easily break teams are lessened if not done away altogether.
