NBA Finals: 3 things you need to know

For the second season in a row, the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs will do battle for the Larry O'Brien Trophy, with each perhaps looking to end their dynasty with one final NBA Championship.

To get here, the Heat swept the Bobcats, dispatched the Nets with a gentleman's sweep and toppled their would-be rival Indiana in six games. The Spurs, meanwhile, stumbled to a seven-game win over Dallas, steamrolled Portland in five and avenged a 2012 defeat to Oklahoma City in six games.

They are the league's two best teams, as they were a year ago. Will history repeat itself, or will the timeless Spurs put a feather in the cap of their two-decade run of dominance? 

The series gets underway on Thursday; here are three things you need to know.

Rematch of the 2013 Finals

Obviously, the biggest narrative piece for this series is that it's a rematch from last year's final, the first time the league has had a finals rematch since the Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz met in 1997 and 1998. Last year, the Heat won their second consecutive title by defeating the Spurs in seven games, marking the first time in the Gregg Popovich-Tim Duncan era that the Spurs had lost an NBA Final.

Does this mean that the Heat should be the favorites, having edged the Spurs last season? On the contrary, bookmakers actually opened the Spurs as slight favorites.

After all, the Heat were nearly dispatched in Game 6 last year before Ray Allen hit one of the most clutch shots in the history of the league.

The drama of the final moments of Game 6 speaks to how excellent the entire series was, with the team's trading wins for the first six games and four of the games being tight in the fourth quarter. You can relive the highlights from that one in this tidy six-minute video:

This also marks the third time LeBron James will face the Spurs in the finals, as his Cleveland Cavaliers were swept in the 2007 championship series.

These are the league's two best teams

A complaint that can often be lobbied at the final series in any sport is that the two best teams aren't facing off (looking at you, New York Rangers). While the Western Conference was incredibly deep, it seems safe to say at this juncture that the Heat and Spurs do, in fact, represent the league's two best teams squaring of for a ring.

To wit, look at the dominance these team's have exhibited this season (and consider that, you know, they were here last year, too, with largely similar teams):

The Heat may have been laying in the weeds a bit during the season, playing below their potential. This makes sense, of course, considering they were one of the league's oldest teams, and it's made for a relatively healthy squad here in June.

Does being in the East tarnish the degree to which they turned it up in the playoffs? Quite the contrary - they posted what would have been the league's best offensive efficiency despite playing against the league's sixth (Charlotte), 19th (Brooklyn) and best defense (Indiana). The defense may be of some concern given the surgical precision of the Spurs, but this same group figured it out a year ago.

As for the Spurs, well, they owned the league's best record, top-six marks on both ends of the floor, and have been thorough in their playoff execution. It seemed apparent for most of the season that the Spurs were on another level, and short of a brief stumble against Dallas, there's been little to suggest otherwise.

Big threes, two paths, one goal

The Heat and Spurs represent diametrically opposed ways of building an NBA dynasty. And don't get it twisted, these are dynasties in the modern definition of the word, with the Spurs now in their sixth final over a 17-year span and the Heat the first team to visit the finals in four consecutive years since the Celtics in the mid-1980s.

But the Heat, as they'll surely be positioned leading up to the series, are an assembled gang of hitmen. Brought together in free agency after each of their big three stars had already established himself, the Heat stand in stark contrast to the "natural" way to build a contender. With James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh established, the Heat were then able to surround them with aging former-stars willing to take a smaller role for a chance at a ring.

The Spurs, however, have been built organically and will be positioned as all that is right with basketball. Gregg Popovich coached a lucky-to-be-terrible team in 1996-97, affording the franchise Tim Duncan. They were later joined by Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker to create one of the best trios in league history, and the system has constantly turned retreads and would-be scrubs into productive pieces.

That's not to say one way is superior to the other - the Spurs have a lengthier, 17-year reign of dominance, but the Heat could earn a third ring in four years together to just four in 17 for San Antonio - but who you root for may say something about you as a basketball fan.

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