No Boston Celtics. No Los Angeles Lakers. No San Antonio Spurs.
For only the second time in the past thirteen seasons the NBA Finals does not have any of those three marquee teams playing in it’s championship series. Both times that has happened, it has been a matchup of the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat.
The second chapter of these two heavyweights, however, will read much differently than the first.
The landscape of the league has radically changed since the first Mavs-Heat matchup in 2006. There’s a simple explanation for that and his name is Lebron James. When James took his talents to South Beach he continued what is becoming an ever-popular trend in the NBA today – superstars wanting to play with superstars.
Say what you will about Lebron James, but you can’t you criticize a guy who wants to win. For seven years he tried it the other way. He put all of those Cleveland teams on his back and took them as far as he could, but in the end management could not put enough talent around him to make him want to stay.
Yes, his decision to make “The Decision” was in poor taste, but he had every right to leave Cleveland. He didn’t owe them anything. It’s a business and I can’t blame him for that.
By teaming up free agents Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and Lebron James, the Miami Heat have created a new, and may I add terrifying, “Big 3” that looks to be peaking at just the right time in the season.
The comeback win in Game 5 that closed the door on the Chicago Bulls was engineered by the late heroics of James, who almost amassed a triple double (28 Pts, 11 Reb, 6 Ast) and Wade, who added 21 of his own.
Chris Bosh has also been impressive in this, his first postseason. Bosh is averaging 18.6 points and almost nine rebounds a game (8.9) in these playoffs. With James and Wade drawing an extraordinary amount of attention from defenders, Bosh has been able to find space for his preferred intermediate-short game.
Oh, and then there are the other guys that play around the “Big 3.” Those guys have been surprisingly good, too. Mike Miller has shown up to play lately, scoring 12 points and pulling down 9 boards in a Game 4 win in the Conference Finals, and enough cannot be said about the spark that Heat co-captain, Udonis Haslem has given them. With Haslem back in the lineup after missing most of the season, the Heat get a little deeper in the front court, where they struggled to some extent in the regular season.
Despite the Mavericks not boasting a “Big 3” as fierce as Miami, they do just fine; combating whatever obstacle they have faced in the playoffs behind the unwavering talents of Dirk Nowitzki.
Nowitzki, now five years older, and five years more experienced, will get his second crack at bolstering his career resume with an NBA title. In the Conference Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder he averaged 32.2 in five games and displayed just how clutch he is, scoring in double digits in each of the games in the 4th quarter and overtimes. When he shoots now, you just expect it to go in. You’re more surprised now when it doesn’t.
Behind Dirk, Dallas puts out a much stronger team collectively than they did in the ’06 Finals. No disrespect to Jerry Stackhouse, Keith Van Horn, or Devin Harris, but anytime you can add a sure-to-be Hall of Fame guard in Jason Kidd, a revitalized player with a defensive prowess in Tyson Chandler, and a handful of other weapons off the bench, you find yourself in a better position to vie for a championship. Ultimately, it could be Dallas’ depth that separates them from Miami.
Veteran Shawn Marion did a nice job defending Kevin Durant during the Oklahoma Series. Durant scored 140 points in the series on 105 field goal attempts and 49 free throw attempts, opposed to Dirk’s 161 points on 88 field goal attempts and 61 free throw attempts. Marion made him work for those points. If Marion can take Wade somewhat out of the game, I think Miami is going to have a tough time winning games.
So what will this series come down to? Simply, defense. Defense has been one of the major factors in championship winning teams. Since the advent of the NBA All-Defense Team awards in 1968-1969, only five teams have not had either a First-Team or Second-Team All-Defense player on their roster.
If you look back at the exceptions of those championship winnings teams, you find some offensive juggernauts filled with Hall of Famers.
The 30.6 points per game of Hall of Famer Rick Barry led the 1974-1975 Golden State Warriors to a championship. Averaging 108.5 ppg as a team that year, the Warriors were as bad on defense as they were stellar on offense. That year they gave up 105.2 ppg.
The 1980-1981 Boston Celtics led by Larry Bird, Robert Parish, Nate Archibald, and rookie Kevin McHale, all Hall of Famers, scored even more than Golden State at a 109.9 ppg.
Alas, the most recent of these oddities, is the 2005-2006 Miami Heat. With a young Dwyane Wade and Shaq at the end of his prime, the Heat came back from two games down in the series to win the NBA Finals. Not necessarily a power house, scoring only 99.9 ppg in the regular season, the combination of Wade and Shaq reminded you of how good the duo of Kobe and Shaq used to be.
Though it is not a given, teams with excellent individual defenders have always faired well in the NBA Finals. I expect for this series to have plenty of that.
Miami is of a different breed when it comes to their defense. Without a “true” big man in the lineup, they rely on intense recovery defense from their studs. All of Miami’s “Big 3” are capable of coming up with a swat at any time. Combined, they accounted for 43% of Miami’s blocks during the year.
On the other hand, Dallas is well equipped to guard any team nicely in a half court set. Kidd has always been an above average defender and Tyson Chandler makes players think twice before entering the paint again.
It’s going to be important for Dallas to limit Miami’s running opportunities and not let them get out into their transition game where they are most potent. By slowing the game down they can let Dirk go to work on whoever shows up across from him.
With all of that said, and considering that Lebron James was named to the First-Team All Defense team this year, are the Heat destined to win the championship? I don’t know exactly but I know it should make for one of the more entertaining NBA Finals in recent memory.
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