Don’t Mess With Miami!!!

After playing listlessly in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, the Miami Heat gave us another glimpse of what they are oh-so-capable of doing; which is to once again come from behind a comfortable lead in the final quarter to steal Game 2, 111 – 108, and tie the Finals series 1-1.

The Heat won this game with more physicality and mental toughness. On defense, Coach Eric Spoelstra made the initial adjustment of replacing Caleb Martin for Kevin Love in the starting five, to address Aaron Gordon’s bullying ways in Game 1. This showed that the Heat were willing to trade their offense for more defense. The Heat also took away Nikola Jokic’s passing game, and made him more of a scorer, not the orchestrator that had brought in more points and more participation from the Nuggets’ support cast. Finally, the Heat continued to confound the Nuggets by constantly shifting their defense from man to zone and back. The Heat were able to keep the Nuggets offense guessing, ultimately taking charge of the tempo in the final quarter and snatching Game 2.

On the offense, the Heat’s role players started scoring, creating too many wide open and timely 3’s from nifty picks that befuddled the Nuggets defense. They also took a page from the Jokic-Murray 2-man game, with Bam Adebayo teaming up with either Gabe Vincent or Kyle Lowry. Bam was scoring almost at will from pick-and-rolls, keeping the Heat within range of the Nuggets. Finally, they had Jimmy ‘Friggin’ Butler taking charge in the dying minutes.

Again, the Heat’s resilience showed when the Nuggets built up a seemingly comfortable 8-point lead early in the last quarter. That’s just where they wanted the Nuggets to be, in a mental state of simply protecting a lead. Once the Nuggets got to that ‘Playing-not-to-lose’ state, as opposed to ‘Playing-to-win’, the Heat tweaked their defense, revved up their offense, and the Nuggets were too late to adjust.

Undoubtedly, Denver has more talent, better height and heft, and are favored by a huge margin. But if they continue not to play with the same intensity as the Heat do, they will find themselves in deep shit. On offense, the Nuggets need to attack, attack, attack. At all times, they need to run the ball up, deny the Heat a chance to set up their defense. They need to speed things up to take back the tempo of the game. They need to stop playing not to lose, and instead play to win. And they need more movement without the ball. More movement will trigger more assists from Jokic, the biggest indicator of success for the Nuggets. If the bulk of the points come from Nikola, if he starts to carry the bulk of the scoring load and forgets his assist role, the team suffers. And they have to be more unpredictable. Being creative and less predictable will bring them to the next level.

But on defense, they need to bring in the same physicality as the Heat. They need to eliminate those mental breakdowns that led to wrong reads and wide open 3’s. Again, they will also need to revise their defense every so often and stop being predictable. The Nuggets will not win on sheer talent alone. They will need to make adjustments and set different patterns to beat off the Heat’s grit and grind.

This series is starting to look like the championship series it was billed to be. It’s no longer simply about the talent, the skill, the power. The elements of thinking ball, of coaching and culture, of subtle adjustments, of tempo and team play, of match-ups and mix-ups; all these are coming to the fore. As I said to my friend, Archer, the Miami Heat are actually THAT good. Period. All those naysayers who have been banking on the seedings must by now realize that the Heat’s winning run against the top-seed Milwaukee Bucks, the bigger New York Knicks and the defending East champs Boston Celtics was no fluke. This is a strong, solid, though underrated team. (And they love that.) The fact that they went in front 3-0 against the Celtics before they relaxed a bit, the fact that they have been routinely cutting down double-digit last quarter leads, the fact that they are playing without 2 solid performers in Herro and Oladipo – all these point to the fact that these naysayers simply had it all wrong. So don’t ever mess with Miami.

And the Nuggets better believe it. They cannot take this thing lightly. Or the Heat will steal this crown away from them.

Cover photo courtesy of CNN.