What? Too obvious? OK, so it's pretty easy to just name the team who just won the championship, especially if they happen to be one of the most dominant teams in finals history.  In this case, this distinction isn't just about how well the Spurs played, or even how they put together a near-perfect roster. It's about how flat-out enjoyable they were to watch. A decade or so ago, watching the Spurs was the equivalent of eating one's vegetables. This year, they made flawless ball movement, mistake-free execution and selfless team play feel downright ice-creamy.  Even before the playoffs, the Spurs established themselves as the best team in one of the most competitive Western Conferences ever. They went 62-20 and secured the No1 seed even though head coach Gregg Popovich was resting his starters more than usual. As good as they looked, they were one of many top seeds that struggled in their opening-round postseason match, as Dirk Nowitzki and the eighth-seeded Dallas Mavericks shocked many by taking it to seven games before Tim Duncan and company could crush them.  If there were any worries that the Spurs were not as good as their record indictated, they were quelled in the next series where they took out the Portland Trail Blazers in five. By this point, the Spurs had found their groove and looked like, by far, the best team in the playoffs.  In the western finals, they faced the second-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder and recently crowned league MVP Kevin Durant. After being blown out in the first two games, the Thunder won the next two thanks to the surprise return of Serge Ibaka, something like San Antonio's kryptonite. The Spurs were able to regroup, eventually knocking off the Thunder in overtime of Game 6 in what might have been the true NBA finals.  In the actual finals, the Spurs had absolutely no trouble with the Miami Heat, beating them in five games and only losing by two points in Game 2. The Spurs' four wins were complete blowouts including a span, as Grantland's Zach Lowe pointed out, in which the Spurs beat "Miami by 57 points combined over three games”.  The 2014 Spurs made the two-time reigning champions look like a D-League team, a major reason why the fifth championship team in franchise history may be remembered as the best of them all.  Not for consideration: Milwaukee Bucks.  How bad were the Bucks? Despite the Philadelphia 76ers being the worst team in the Eastern Conference for NBA Draft related purposes, their 19-63 record didn't quite suck enough to displace the Bucks, who went 15-67. The punchline: the Bucks were actually trying for a playoff spot. And because the basketball gods were determined to help the teams that were at least trying not to be bad, they landed the second overall pick while the 76ers had to settle for third.  Durant was the MVP of the 2013-14 season, making him the first non-LeBron MVP since the Chicago Bulls' Derrick Rose won it in 2011. Durant, often forced to carry the offensive load with Russell Westbrook missing with injuries, averaged 32.0 points a game. Maybe even more impressive was his 12-game stretch of scoring 30 points or more. It was the best season of his career so far, and the scariest thing is that he's only 25 … meaning he could get better.  Durant also gained fans by giving one of the most unique acceptance speeches of all time. After, calling his mom the "real MVP", he spent the next half-hour thanking literally all of his teammates. Many found Durant's humility refreshing, although presumably these were the ones who just caught the highlights and didn't have to sit through the whole thing.  Not for consideration: Andrew Bynum (Cleveland Cavaliers, Chicago Bulls but not really, Indiana Pacers, his neighborhood bowling team for most of the playoffs).  Last year's runaway LVP, Bynum managed to do the impossible in 2013-14: he managed to be less valuable when he actually played than when he sat out an entire year with injuries during his stint with the 76ers. The Cleveland Cavaliers, hunting for their playoff appearance sinced they lost some guy named LeBron to some Florida team, thought of Bynum as a low-risk/high-reward move. Unfortunately, Cleveland vastly underestimated the risk part of the equation, as Bynum offered very little on the court, when his body actually let him play, and was a petulant disaster in the locker room.  After Bynum's attitude became increasingly intolerable, including an infamous practice where he shot the ball every possession, the Cavaliers announced that he wouldn't play for them again and then attempted to trade him. They probably should have done that in reverse order. The Bulls traded All-Star Luol Deng for Bynum's contract, simply for the cap space they would get by immediately waiving him.  Bynum wasn't out of a job too long, as the Pacers decided it couldn't possibly hurt to pick up the oft-injured Bynum for the stretch. After adding him to the roster, as well as trading former All-Star Danny Granger for the 76ers' Evan Turner, a Pacers team that began the season on a 11-1 run began to play like, well, the Cavaliers.  That was probably just a coincidence, right?  The Pacers recovered to clinch the best record in the Eastern Conference, but they would take no further chances. Early in their playoff run, they announced that Bynum, whether because of his injuries or for other reasons, would not play another game. That's how the former center of the future ended up kicked out from three teams in a single season.  This should be the end of his career, but, hey, the Heat took a flyer on Greg Oden and Michael Beasley last season, so who knows?  Wait, did you think I was going to pick anybody else?  Last season, Australia's Patty Mills was stuck on the bench, on full-time towel-waving duties, while his team was advancing through the playoffs. It doesn't look like Mills will be on the back of the bench anytime soon, not after his fantastic play in the NBA Finals.  Let the Free Agent bidding begin.  At this point, we should just award the Spurs' cranky basketball genius the title every season until he does something inexcusable, like convincing the owners to take a flyer on Bynum. Since his fifth championship with the Spurs basically sews up his managerial legacy, maybe we will now see more of his cuddly, sentimental side.  The Knicks are the greatest basketball comedy troupe of our era. Imagine the wacky hijinks of the Harlem Globetrotters combined with the perpetual losing of the Washington Generals, shot through the prism of "the comedy of the awkward" of The Office or I'm Alan Partridge. That was the 2013-14 Knicks.  What was the funniest moment this year? Well, there was JR Smith and his trademark "untie your opponents' shoelaces" routine. We're assuming that this was the second part of the "adult basketball player switches bodies with 5-year old kid" storyline and that we just missed the set-up.  For more mature comedy fans there was Andrea Bargnani, who not only treated us with his slapstick bit, "how defense is played in Bizarro World", but also gave us the most hilarious shot of the season:  The only real problem with the Knicks' comedy was that it was too mean-spirited. it was hard not to feel sorry for the fans. Comedy is best when it's at the expense of pretentious, unlikable antagonists who deserve it – not long-suffering Knicks fans.  Luckily, next season expect Phil Jackson to be promoted to a regular. Plus, the Knicks are also bringing in Derek Fisher, the closest thing the basketball world has to a Christopher McDonald character, who will be playing the role of a just-retired NBA player who finds himself over his head when he's offered a head coaching job despite having no previous experience.  According to reports, team representatives at the NBA Draft lottery flat out laughed when it became clear that once again the Cavaliers would get the top pick. The Cavs only had a 1.7% chance of a third No1 pick in four years, but apparently Cleveland are as lucky in the draft as they are unlucky in nearly everything else.  Not for consideration: Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics.  Normally, these two don't make a lot of appearances at the NBA Draft, but that was not the case last season. The 27-55 Lakers lost Dwight Howard to the Houston Rockets during the offseason and then lost Kobe Bryant for the season after he returned too soon from the achilles injury that ended his season last year. The results were a harrowing look at the future for Lakers fans.  The Celtics' rotten win-loss record, 25-57, was self-inflicted. Knowing they were in a rebuilding stage, the Celtics traded Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to the Brooklyn Nets, sent head coach Doc Rivers to the Los Angeles Clippers and kept sole remaining All-Star Rajon Rondo off court as much as possible. Although no one would admit it, the Celtics were tanking.  The upside of having to endure brutal seasons like this is that the worse record a team has, the better chance they have of picking near the top of a very deep draft. It was all for naught. The Lakers ended with the seventh pick and the Celtics the 6th. For the first time maybe ever, fans from LA and Boston were jealous of fans from Cleveland.  The NBA awarded it to Michael Carter-Williams of the 76ers, but only because they are obligated to name somebody. Thank goodness the draft is supposed to be loaded, because the 2013 draft's early results have been downright depressing.  Not for consideration: Anthony Bennett (Cleveland Cavaliers)  Here's a koan for the basketball fans out there: if it's Cleveland making the selection, are they really that lucky? Being able to pick early means nothing if a team is terrible at picking.  OK, yes they got it right with their first post-LeBron No1 pick when they selected guard Kyrie Irving, but that pick was such a no-brainer that not even the Cavs could have messed it up. Cleveland's later draft moves have not panned out too well. In 2012 they picked Dion Waiters with the fourth pick, hoping he could be Kyrie's sidekick. Instead, the two have apparently been feuding. In 2013, to the surprise of nearly all, they picked UNLV forward Anthony Bennett.  No one saw Bennett as a potential superstar, but he was considered one of the most NBA-ready players of his class. The Cavaliers picked him because they felt he would work well with their plan to make the postseason. Instead, Bennett might have been one of the main reasons they ended back in the draft. He began his rookie season with a brutal scoreless stretch and it barely got better from there. His performance was so forgettable that it led to speculation that he might be the worst No1 pick in NBA history.  Stupid Eastern Conference. Because the NBA playoff system states that only eight teams in each conference can qualify, the biggest feelgood story in basketball came to an abrupt end when the 49-33 Mavericks clinched the eighth seed in the west. That left the Phoenix Suns, at 48-34, on the outside looking in.  If Phoenix had played in the east, their record would have tied them with the Bulls and the Toronto Raptors, the third and fourth seeds. That's right, not only would the Suns have made the playoffs, there would have been a good chance they would have had home-court advantage in the first round.  Even if it ended in disappointment, this was a much better season than any Suns fan, or sane individual in general, could have predicted. Coming into the 2013-14 season it looked like the Suns would be the worst team in the Western Conference, possibly the league. After all, this was a team that was apparently making moves in the offseason aimed at the draft rather than winning any games. The only players remaining from the previous year's squad were Goran Dragic, PJ Tucker, Channing Frye and Markieff and Marcus Morris. They not only started the season with journeyman windmill dunk specialist Gerald Green on their roster – he was one of Phoenix's starters.  When the Suns started with a 14-9 run, it was a neat little story in a "if the playoffs started today" sort of way. Nobody, least of all Suns fans, were expecting a team deliberately filled with young, inexperienced players and unheralded role players to contend. Somehow though, they remained in the hunt until Dallas clinched it in the last week of the regular season. While it would have been more fun to see them in the playoffs than the likes of the Atlanta Hawks or Charlotte Bobcats, we should be thankful that the Suns' inexplicable run happened at all.  Burn it down. All of it.  After TMZ-released tapes featuring Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling warning his mistress "not to bring [African-Americans] to my games” went viral, these Golden State Warriors fans responded with the funniest signs of the season:  "I brought a black guy to the game." -- Awesome sign by a Warriors fan. pic.twitter.com/hJg58qBJZS  An unprecedented number of first-round series went the distance, and it looked like the Rockets/Trail Blazers series was going to be one of them. In Game 6, the Rockets were on the cusp of elimination when Chandler Parsons hit a late basket which gave them a 98-96 lead with seconds to spare. With only a fraction of a second left to get up a final shot, it looked like the Trail Blazers would have to do the last thing they wanted to do: return to Houston for a Game 7.  They didn't have to worry about that because somehow, some way, Damian Lillard made an improbable three-pointer for a 99-98 lead with no time left:  The Rockets were absolutely shell-shocked. It felt less like the ending of a NBA game and more like an overtime loss in NHL, when one team's hopes vanish in the blink of an eye. Dwight Howard has said he still hasn't come close to getting over it.  Unfortunately for the Trail Blazers, their magic ran out in the next series, where they faced the Spurs. The Trail Blazers lost in five, but they should be able to keep their heads high. After all, they lasted just as long as the Heat.  He was supposed to be a distraction, right?  After coming out, the veteran waited and waited for a call that never came. Collins was unsigned at the start of the regular season and even as injuries hammered the league, he remained unsigned until 23 February, when the Nets signed him to a 10-day contract.  Why did it take so long? Well, even before his announcement, Collins was a marginal player, a backup big-man mostly signed to absorb fouls so a team's impact players could stay in the game. Plus, at 35 he was close to retirement.  There were whispers, of course, that teams didn't want to risk the distraction of having to deal with the first openly gay, active NBA player. There were fears he would be a distuption in the locker room or attract a media circus. That ended up not happening.  Yes, there was plenty of attention for his first game. His fourth or fifth? Not really a news story at all.  By the time the Nets were impressed enough with Collins to sign him for the rest of the year the story didn't so much sniff the sports page. There were no biblical plagues, no signs of the apocalypse, no player protests of any kind.  It was all incredibly boring, to be honest. And that's a good thing.  Just months after replacing David Stern as NBA commissioner, Adam Silver found himself facing a nightmare. In the midst of one of the most entertaining first rounds of the playoffs, TMZ posted audio of the Clippers owner making racist remarks. The Sterling audio was the biggest story in sports – his comments drew condemnation from fans, media and players around the league.  It was clear that Silver, for the good of the league, had to make a stand. Although under his predecessor the league had mostly tolerated Sterling, that would not be possible. If sanctions weren't sufficient, Silver ran the risk of sparking a player boycott in the middle of the postseason.  Silver brought the hammer down. He announced that the NBA would fine Sterling the maximum amount and ban him from attending games. Then came the biggest bombshell: Silver would start the process to have the other owners vote on forcing Sterling to sell the Clippers.  That moment effectively marked the end of Donald Sterling, the Worst Owner in Sports. Although Sterling now alternates from accepting his exile to threatening the league with lawsuits, it's only a matter of time before the Clippers are sold to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for a record $2bn.  It would be a mistake to praise Silver too much – his hand was essentially forced by the players – but it's impossible to imagine his predecessor taking such a strong stance. His own reputation, furthermore, was boosted, and he may now be the only commissioner in sports that fans actually like.  Instead of being an absolute catastrophe, a scandal that could have prematurely jeopardized his new status, Silver's decisiveness in the face of a potentially damaging controversy might end up being the defining moment of his reign.
A look back at the best and worst of the 2013-14 NBA Season. Spoiler Alert: The San Antonio Spurs make a few appearances.