SAN ANTONIO -- It's funny that in a game defined by dozens of games, where success is crafted by thousands of possessions, basketball is still remembered viscerally in singular moments. Coaches pour in hours of development, film work, decision making, process improvements, and yet know they are still at the whims of a few good, or bad, seconds. 

Mike D'Antoni definitely knows that. 

The Houston Rockets take on the San Antonio Spurs in the second-round's most exciting matchup, a heavyweight fight billed as another MVP candidate showdown between Kawhi Leonard and James Harden. But the most interesting matchup is really an old familiar one. 

D'Antoni vs. Popovich. 

The two went at it throughout the 2000s, with D'Antoni's "Seven Seconds or Less" Suns battling the stodgy, traditional, grind-you-to-pulp Spurs of Popovich. They were sometimes outgunned, sometimes a bad matchup because of baffling decisions. (I will never get over the irony that Steve Kerr, maestro of the Warriors' small-ball offensive revolution, was the GM who blew up that team and acquired an over-the-hill Shaq.) 

And then there's 2007. 

The Suns had them. They had tied the series 2-2. Despite losing Steve Nash for crucial minutes to a busted nose in a Game 1 loss, they had rallied against the Spurs. The tide had turned. And this happened:

Amar'e Stoudemire and Boris Diaw were suspended for Game 5, which the Suns lost after blowing a double-digit lead. You felt the air go out of that series, and San Antonio won in six games. The Shaq trade happened the next year. Nothing was the same. D'Antoni was gone the following summer. 

It was one game. One moment. One playoff-level, clearly-not-clean foul as Robert Horry knocked Nash into the scorer's table, but also one of a million things that happened during D'Antoni's time with Phoenix vs. the Spurs. And he hasn't forgotten a moment of it. On Monday, D'Antoni was asked at shootaround before Game 1 if this felt like "returning to the scene of the crime," a playoff game at AT&T Center in San Antonio. 

"Oh, yeah," D'Antoni said. "There's a lot of places I don't go near. The scorer's table ... there's a lot of bad memories." 

It's a fascinating look at D'Antoni, openly admitting the pain he still feels about it, ten years later. Popovich has gotten the upper hand on D'Antoni in every meeting. The Suns' lone win with that core vs. the Spurs came in 2010, after D'Antoni left. Coaches don't think in terms of pitting themselves against one another. Their battles are always with the team to play the right way, with the officials for every call, with themselves in second-guessing all their decisions. 

Coaches that have been in the league as long as Popovich and D'Antoni share a mutual appreciation; Popovich has never said a negative word about D'Antoni. He has even taken large chunks of D'Antoni's offense (along with Phil Jackson's Triangle and other elements) and adapted them to the Spurs. But for D'Antoni, this is his "Eleanor" from "Gone In 60 Seconds." 

"It's the one car no matter how many times you try and boost something always happens." 

This has been a season of career validation for D'Antoni, showing his way can work if the superstars buy in, that he can coach a team that isn't wretched defensively, that he's still a coach who can win in this league. But if he wants to alter the reputation as coach who can get you to the base of the summit, but not the top of the world, he's going to have face down old ghosts, starting with Game 1 in San Antonio on Monday night.