After the late 4th quarter surge by the Wade/James -led Miami Heat over the Derrick Rose's Chicago Bulls, the NBA Finals had completed its cast. Now, the Heat will have a re-match with their 2006 NBA Finals nemesis, Dirk Nowitzki's Dallas Mavericks. But before moving through, let us think of the "what if" moments from their previous match ups against the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Chicago Bulls respectively and see how did the youth didn't made well in these match-ups.
Let us start with the Western Conference Finalists. Youth vs Experience. The Mavs were early favorites since their jaw-dropping sweep against the defending champs, the Los Angeles Lakers but critics claimed that their lame defense would not stand out against OKC's one-two punch, namely Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. Since the acquisition of Celtic's X-factor, Kendrick Perkins, the Thunders had a legitimate post-up threat and had a superior interior defense tandem with another big man Serge Ibaka as what have been seen in their previous match-up with the monster front court of Memphis, stopping Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol. Clearly, the Thunder had advantages with the guards and the big men, knowing that Jason Kidd was too old for Westbrook, and Dirk was not even playing like a big man. But as the game results clearly showed, it was an impressive win for the Mav, punishing the young guys with a 4-1 victory.
But the "what should have been" an advantage for the Thunder, didn't came out as an advantage at all. It was not all about Kevin Durant. I am talking about Russell Westbrook. Russell had a huge advantage, skill-wise and athletisism-wise over the Mavericks' point guards namely Jose Juan Barrea and Jason Kidd. Lately, Russell Westbrook has been receiving ass-kicking comments from NBA fans after their demise in the West. The criticism for me is valid. As scintillating as Westbrook’s scoring game can be at times, but his decision-making and his lack of ability to dissect a situation and attack it appropriately is every bit as maddening as his skill is off the charts, in which Jason Kidd was his opposite. He averaged as many turnovers (4.8) during the conference finals as he did assists (4.8). And there are few instances where Westbrook taking more shots than Kevin Durant, the league’s two-time scoring champ, or even superb sixth man James Harden, makes much sense in a playoff series. Clearly, it was all about lack of experience and Kidd was smart enough to take it over from him and with the hot-hands of "The German Clutch", the Mavs had secured their spot in the Finals.
Still regarding the Thunder and Mavs series, but now let's talk about Kevin Durant. Sad to say that the recently crowned FIBA MVP did not have enough clutch prowess in this series. It was like Durant was afraid to pull out the trigger when it is game-winning time. Yes, Durant has impressive numbers, but most of his points were from the early moments of the 4th quarter. Since Durant was scared to take chances, it was Westbrook who took out the crunch time job, but unfortunately, Westbrook's shooting was the same as Dwight Howard's free throw shooting, you know what I'm talking about. Unlikely for the Mavericks, Dirk had his clutch shooting fired up, hitting three pointers from time to time and throwing daggers right straight to the chest of the OKC fans. And also, "The Jet" Jason Terry made his flight in this series, making him the X-Factor for the Mavericks, along with the return of "The Matrix" Shawn Marion who played quality games in the playoffs. But remember, Durant and Westbrook were just 23 and 22 years old and I am sure that this won't be the last time that they would be in such situation. Hopefully they had learned their mistakes. And for the Mavericks, it seems that Dirk and Kidd learned a lot from their previous Finals cameo, (2002 and 2003 for Kidd and 2006 for Dirk) and piling them up as a motivation for them to surge back to the finals.
Moving on, let's talk about the Eastern Conference. The Miami Heat had shut their critics up when they previously defeated the fan-favorite Boston Celtics in their semi-final match, making them a round closer to the promise land. But they were bound to face a formidable opponent, the Chicago Bulls, which had made it's first Conference Finals appearance since the Michael Jordan era. The Bulls was a different opponent, but not a different dimension for the Heat. The Bulls's system was so similar to the Celtics, knowing that the recently crowned Coach of the Year Tom Thiboddeau was an assistant for Doc Rivers in the 2008 Champs. The types of plays were also similar, with the enormous physical strength coming from the point guards, namely Rajon Rondo for the Celtics and NBA MVP Derrick Rose for the Bulls.
But how was this Different from the Celtics series?
The Bulls had won their regular season match up against the Heat, 3-0, making this an interesting series. And breaking down with the line up, the Bulls had a point-guard edge with Rose while the heat would have a shooting guard advantage with Dwayne Wade. Lebron was also an upperhand for the Heat in the small forward position but Joakim Noah towers over Joel Anthony in the center position. The key match up was all about Carlos Boozer and Chris Bosh.
And so game 1 happened. That game was a surprising blow-out at the windy city at 103-82. The Bulls showed suffocating interior defense which prevented the dribble-drive penetration game of Wade and James, leaving Chris Bosh the only offensive option. The bulls also dominated the boards and had more shooting chances against the Heat taking 80+ shots against 60+. The bench also provided the ignition for the Bulls and with that posterizing jams of Taj Gibson one of which is against Wade, truly became the turning point of that game which rocked the whole United Center.
After the game, the criticism flooded among the Big Three, saying that clutch players were absent for the Heat. But games 2,3,4 and 5 was clearly different. It is the Heat's time to exhibit their suffocating defense which avoided the killer cross-over of Derrick Rose from punishing them. It was not about the Bulls' defensive collapse, in fact, their defense was still impressive but it was all about options. The Bulls' scoring option was only Derrick Rose (I am talking about consistency knowing that Luol Deng and Carlos Boozer were inconsistent scorers). Rose was contained with double teams and triple teams whenever he drives to the basket. And due to his lack of playoff experience, he has no idea on how to remedy those pesky defensive tactics, just like when the BIGGER Lebron was assigned to defend him during the last five minutes of the games. Rose just settled for jumpers whenever Lebron was in front of him instead of using his quickness advantage and driving to the basket and eventually drawing out some foul.
Talking about Derrick Rose's lack of experience, the Bulls would have won games 4 and 5, but thanks to the clutch free-throw misses of Mr. MVP, they gave the game away. So what if Derrick Rose made those clutch free throws? They would have lead this series 3-2.
Regarding the X-Factors, it seems like the Heat was lacking of some bench players, but surprisingly, the injury-ridden veteran Udonis Haslem provided the needed spark for the Heat along with the hot shot Mike Miller when they secured their home victories in the American Airlines Arena. They show experience at their finest.
The key match up that I mentioned a while ago was about Carlos Boozer and Chris Bosh. Boozer recently trash-talked Bosh saying that the Heat was only about the Big Two, but Bosh proved Boozer wrong. Bosh who had been dominant in the series despite the losing 30-point effort in game 1, showed Boozer that he is the boss. With a decent outside touch he scored 34 points in game 3 which secured their home game which gave them a 2-1 lead. It was clear that Chris Bosh's dominance against Boozer was a key with their victory.The other big man, Joakim Noah on the other hand didn't played out well offensively. Despite some great jobs defensively, Noah clearly didn't took out his advantage over Joel Anthony.
Let us not forget about his Royal-Clutchness, Lebron James, who played big in the dying moments of each game. After being whooped with hard-hitting comments after his lack of activity in that game 1 defeat, Lebron has been a man on a mission and has been proving that his "decision" was right. Scoring an average of 12.5 points in the clutch moments of this playoff series, he had proved himself that he can do clutch basketball like fellow NBA greats, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan. And with that "Bully" defense with the smaller Rose, he proved that he's the better player. Along with the leadership of Dwyane Wade, and adding up all of those factors, the Heat advanced to their 2nd franchise finals appearance and hoping to repeat that 2006 win against the Dallas mavericks.And now the Final Chapter begins to unfold, we can see how experience turned out to be a better factor in their previous games and with these two remaining teams, armed with enough talents and experience, an epic NBA Finals awaits. Heat vs Mavericks, place your bets.
Ken Aldren Usman
Ken Aldren Usman
