Tony Parker with an odd warm-up routine (GIF)

The NBA Finals will get underway on Thursday night. As everybody knows by now, the 2014 finals are a rematch of last year’s epic showdown between the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat.

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One year later, much is different for both teams. The state of each team in general is not the same: the Spurs are stronger as a team than they were last year, while you could reasonably argue that the Heat are just a whisper worse than last year. Each team followed a different path to the finals this time around as well, with the Spurs coming off an especially odd series against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

But for everything that might be different, some things remain the same. Among them is the importance of certain key players. For the Heat it goes without saying that they live or die with the best player in the world in the LeBron James. As for the Spurs, their single most important player might be point guard Tony Parker.

There was cause for some discomfort, then, among the Spurs’ faithful when Parker’s status was held in doubt due to an ankle injury.

Parker is good to go for game one, which may or may not have anything to do with this routine that we got a glimpse of before tip-off on Thursday night.

@ZProphet_MMA /

Athletes, man. They are some strange creatures. But hey, whatever works, especially for the Spurs when it comes to Parker’s ankle since this is apparently a supervised and serious activity.