NBA FINALS: Heat-Mavericks

[Sunstroke]

May as well go ahead and get this thread fired up...

I am pulling hard for the Heat, obviously, but this really is a no-lose scenario for me. If Miami wins, great. If Dallas wins, then two players who I really like...and that haven't won a title yet, Jason Terry and Jason Kidd, will finally have their rings.

Dirk Nowitzki scares me a bit, but I really think Miami has the team that can beat the Mav's in a 7 game series. I think they're going to find out that Miami is too damned athletic from the wing to slow them down.

GO HEAT!!

[Dave Gray]

Heat in 5.  (6 at most)

It's the same story.  Dirk is a fantastic player, but the Mavs don't have the defense to stop the HEAT.  The Mavs will get hot with 3 pointers and steal a game, but they don't have enough to win a series.

[dolfan13]

Best basketball player on the planet, and home court advantage...

Heat win in 5, lebron is ur MVP

[TonyB0D]

Mavs in 7

Mavs have the hungrier players. 
Heat have the youth/athletic advangate, but lack quality depth.
It's a toss-up.

[Fau Teixeira]

Heat in 5. And ask Chicago about the heats depth. Seemed like the heat reserves were way up in the plus/minus stat.

[bsmooth]

Heat in 5. And ask Chicago about the heats depth. Seemed like the heat reserves were way up in the plus/minus stat.

Ask the Thunder about the Mavs reserves.

[masterfins]

Should be an interesting series.  I'm pulling for the underdog Mavs, I like Cuban as an owner.

[Sunstroke]

My 92-86 prediction at work today was soooo close.

Miami is going to roll over Dallas. I thought 6 games at the start...I'm hedging toward 5, and unless Dallas figures out a way to slow down Wade & James, it may be a sweep.

[EDGECRUSHER]

You obviously have to give the majority of the credit to Dallas for tonight's comeback, but damn it's hard to ignore Lebron chucking up off balanced 3's in the final 4 minutes for no apparent reason.

[MikeO]

The Heat with one of the epic CHOKE jobs in NBA Finals History. Blowing a 15 pt lead at home late in the 4th quarter.

That's one for the record books. If they lose this series that will haunt Lebron forever! Won't haunt Wade since he already has a ring, but Lebron...yeah that will stick on his resume if they don't win the series.

[EDGECRUSHER]

It always amazes me when teams have success an entire game doing one thing, and then go away from it in the final minutes. The Heat were playing very well and were dominating the inside game, despite Bosh sucking. So, they go away from that and just start hucking up 3's. Terrible collapse.

I still think they win in 6, but this one will hurt Lebron.

[Thundergod]

It always amazes me when teams have success an entire game doing one thing, and then go away from it in the final minutes. The Heat were playing very well and were dominating the inside game, despite Bosh sucking. So, they go away from that and just start hucking up 3's. Terrible collapse.

I still think they win in 6, but this one will hurt Lebron.

Frustrating to say the least. And the foul they had to give at the end... sigh. Wade said they were supposed to foul Nowitski, but "they" (cough cough Chris) had a brain fart.

[Dave Gray]

That was extra frustrating.

We played with arrogance in the last 7 minutes.  We just stopped working for our shots and Lebron wasn't bringing the ball in past the 3 point line, so he was having jack up ill-advised, fade-away 3s.  Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

It was very reminiscent of the HEAT team early in the year, that couldn't produce in a half-court offense.

And while you have to give some credit to Dallas for making the shots at the end, this is, without question, a choke job from the HEAT. 

If they had won this game, especially without getting calls and getting to the line, it's a dagger -- the series is over.  Now, it's very much alive.  Lots of blame to go around -- Spoelstra, Lebron at the top, but also Chris Bosh for brainfarting at the end.  I question why Chalmers is in the game down the stretch.  Miller or Haslem need to be on the court to close out these games.

[jtex316]

Dwayne Wade for 3 (from the corner to go up by 15) - YES!!!

Time out Mavs

Wade holding up hand "posing" the shot with a serious look in his eyes - complete Poker Face.

Then, here comes LeBron partying it up and trying to give "dap" to Wade for scoring point number 36 of the night.

D-Wade is not even trying to participate in all that - he's walking back to the bench. He's been here before - there's too much time left on the clock to be hooping it up and celebrating.

LeBron got excited to have a big lead in game 2, and his inexperience showed. Then when the Mavs made their initial push, everything started going through LeBron and he didn't even bother driving. He did what he did in Cleveland - jack up long-distance, hero fade-away 3's. It didn't work.

It all went downhill from there.

This is a major choke job and I am more upset at myself for staying up late watching this collapse than I am for the Heat actually collapsing like that.

However - I do think that a Game 2 choke-job is not the same thing as a Game 5 or Game 6 choke-job (in the sense that you can close out a series, but don't because you gag it off). Even down 0-2, the series is not over for the Mavs - just ask the 2006 Heat if it was over after being down 0-2 and down 13 with 5:00 to go in game 3.

A road win in Game 3 for the Heat will quickly put aside this massive gag job and allow the Heat to re-claim home court advantage (this is going 7 games, folks).

MikeO is spot-on here - if the Heat lose this, I'm going to look back at his little party with Wade in front of the Mavs bench with LOTS OF TIME left on the clock and I'm going to be very angry at him for jazzing it up before the game was over. It's a 48-minute game, you HAVE to play all 48 minutes to win in this league, especially in the Finals. Did LeBron think the Mavs would just roll over easily? There's a reason they are in the Finals.

[jtex316]

As far as the 1 foul to give situation:

I think you can actually cost yourself the game by fouling, if you screw it up (which at that point, was entirely possible for the Heat to do).

If you foul Dirk in the act of shooting, you have a good chance of him making it and going to the line for a three-point play. Chris Bosh cannot be trusted to pull this off.

What I would have liked to have seen is an old-school Delay of Game warning by the Heat on the inbounds pass, where the defender steps on the line and the ref blows the whistle. This would allow the Heat to see the play developing - teams used to do this all the time and don't do it anymore for some reason.

The Mavs were hot - the Heat had to win in regulation last night, because they weren't going to win in OT.