NBA Finals: Lineups shrink as stakes rise
— -- OAKLAND, Calif. -- It's still too early to pick a defining moment of this series. It's not too soon to call Game 5 a redefining moment for NBA Finals basketball.
It was the ultimate synthesis of the NBA's new era with legitimate championship contention, a night of "not-big basketball" (to use the good-enough-to-get-the-point English of a foreign journalist in the interview room), a D'Antonian-Spoelstric blend of faster tempo and position-less lineups dropped smack into the middle of June.
That's well past what's considered the normal expiration date for that type of play, but there's never a bad time to watch the kind of game that's normally a reward for folks staying up late to catch a West Coast game on NBA League Pass in January.