N.B.A. Finals to Test Small-Market Thunder's National Appeal The San Antonio Spurs were ratings flops when they won the 2003, 2005 and 2007 N.B.A. titles. The Spurs were great, maybe dynastic. But they recorded the three lowest rated N.B.A. finals since at least 1974 when they beat the Nets, the Pistons and the Cavaliers, the least-watched with 9.3 million viewers. Blame the size of the Spurs" market, the fourth smallest in the league. Blame the Spurs" nearly mistake-free, unspectacular style and the middling attractiveness of their opponents. Or blame Tim Duncan's refusal to cede his bank-shooting efficiency for Madison Avenue bankability. Now, another small-market team is in the N.B.A. finals after four years in which no franchise came from an area smaller than the Orlando Magic's (No. This time, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the No. 44 television market, with 712,630 households - smaller even than San Antonio, which is ranked 36th - will try to overcome its small-market disadvantage against the Miami Heat starting Tuesday night on ABC. If the best-of-seven series is competitive, and no team appears headed for a sweep, the Thunder may find the type of broad audience the Spurs could not. The Thunder, led by Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, play a dynamic, dunk-heavy offense that can attract casual sports fans. Myron Patton, a host at KREF-AM, a sports-talk station in Norman, Okla., said, "They're a jump-shooting team, they go up and down the court, and if you're an average fan, you can appreciate that more than a half-court, tough, defensive, we're-going-to-outrebound-you style. But they can do that, too. The devastatingly quick Durant has won three consecutive scoring titles - the first player to do that since Michael Jordan did it from 1995-96 to 1997-98 - and received national recognition through endorsements with Sprint, a league sponsor whose ads have run prominently during the playoffs; Nike; Skullcandy; and Gatorade. His Twitter account has added more than 300,000 followers during the playoffs to give him 2.1 million. His jersey sales rank eighth in the league. Thunder merchandise ranks seventh among all teams. "Durant has the "it" factor," said ABC's Mike Breen, who will call the N.B.A. finals with Jeff Van Gundy. He's got charisma and he's the humble superstar. Still, he said: "I honestly never understood the lack of interest in San Antonio. Duncan wasn't one of the flashiest, but one of the greatest. And referring to Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, he said, "Manu and Tony were dynamic, exciting players to watch." Durant and Westbrook, who is ferocious in the open court, form a terrific pairing. And the Durant-LeBron James rivalry is a virtual promise of electricity. "We could see this finals matchup three or four times, like Magic-Bird," said Steve Kerr, the TNT analyst who called the Thunder-Spurs Western Conference finals and won five N.B.A. titles with the Bulls and the Spurs. "Until they started moving the ball against San Antonio, Oklahoma City was stuck in the mud, with one-on-one penetration," he said Monday by phone. Miami is all isolation. I want to see if they can move the ball with the same flow and efficiency that they eventually played with against the Spurs. He called Durant "very likable and very easy to root for." The Heat are more established than the Thunder. They won a title in 2006 (average viewership: a so-so 12.9 million) and were beaten by Dallas last year before 17.3 million viewers, according to the Nielsen Company. The Heat are also more alluring than any Spurs opponent in their 21st century finals. The Spurs won their first title in 1998-99, beating the Knicks; the viewership of 16 million benefited from the size of the New York market, but it was still 13 million fewer than the Chicago-Utah finals in 1998. The Heat bring momentum - and a healthier Chris Bosh - to the N.B.A. finals. They fell behind, three games to two, to the Boston Celtics, then responded with two rousing victories to take the Eastern Conference finals. Games 4 and 6, when James exploded for 45 points, were the highest rated telecasts for the N.B.A. on cable. The series might have done more to make detractors appreciate James more for his court skills than hate him for the way he left the Cavaliers. But some still want to see him lose, and that's good for ratings. The Western Conference finals - in which the Thunder beat the Spurs in six games after losing the first two - offered a bit of promise for the finals: the series averaged 7.8 million viewers, 13 percent better than last year, when the Thunder lost to the Dallas Mavericks, who play in the fifth largest market. Maybe the Thunder can alter the small-market dynamics that bedeviled the Spurs. Perhaps they have vindicated the judgment of the league to approve the SuperSonics" contentious move from Seattle, the No. 12 market. "Oklahoma City may be the third smallest N.B.A. market in term of TV homes," Adam Silver, the N.B.A."s deputy commissioner, wrote in an e-mail, "but the Thunder have captivated an engaged audience well outside of Oklahoma's state limits and for that matter the U.S." He cited Durant and Thunder-related Web traffic; Durant's marketability, and the Western Conference finals ratings to back his hypothesis. Another measure of Thunder popularity that appears to separate them from the Spurs comes from the admittedly biased view of Mick Cornett, the mayor of Oklahoma City, a former broadcaster. "We've got great appeal, especially among children who might be developing their first team allegiance," he said. I run into a lot of people who say their kids are huge Thunder fans.