Tonight, the Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs will go at it in game seven of the NBA finals. The entire season has come down to this. Should the Heat win, South Beach will go crazy, but I think the basketball result will be more of an excuse for the celebration than its underlying cause. And if the Spurs emerge victorious, will revelers, uh, throng the River Walk?

LSAT studiers who are basketball fans have it easy: the June LSAT is over and done with, and the October LSAT is still far away. You can watch the NBA finals without any tinge of guilt.

Although the LSAC will never ask you to shoot free throws (probably), there are lessons you can take from this year’s NBA finals if you’re studying for the LSAT. Here are some parallels:

It takes a strong rotation throughout to succeed.

Few would dispute that the Heat has the strongest player on the floor in LeBron James. Given a time machine, Tim Duncan might have a case, but as far as we know, there’s no such thing. And yet the two teams find themselves dead even after six games; both teams have had surprising performances, both good and disappointing, from various starting and bench players. The Spurs certainly wouldn’t even be in game seven of the Finals if not for the lights-out shooting of Danny Green.

The lesson for LSAT studiers: it takes excellence on all sections to get a top LSAT score. But if you’re iffy on Logical Reasoning and Reading Comp, it won’t translate into a top LSAT score.

You have to be able to come back from setbacks.

The very heavily tattooed Chris “Birdman” Andersen, of the Heat struggled in game 3 and was subsequently benched in games four and five. He came back in game six, not to steal the show, but to play fourteen moderately productive minutes. Manu Ginobili, well, how shall we put this, did not have a good game in game six. He turned over the ball eight times and was a not-so-stellar –21 in the plus/minus. The Spurs will count on him and trust him to turn things around and play better in game seven.

As you study for the LSAT, disappointing days are inevitable. You might run across a question type that just gives you fits, or you might have your LSAT score plummet on an LSAT practice test. These things are bound to happen, and if you let them bring you down you’re just setting yourself up for failure. You have to figure out what went wrong, and shake it off. Keep your eyes on the prize of LSAT success. There’s no trophy or fame but the rewards are just as sweet.

If nothing else, lose the headband.