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We have just witnessed the unthinkable. With the entire world writing them off, the Heat pulled off the most improbable upsets, but was this a genius adjustment, luck maybe, or possibly a horrible defensive strategy by Boston? We’re about to find out.
Right from the beginning Miami made it known exactly what was going to be their game plan.
They knew they couldn’t compete point for point with the Celtics, so Spoelstra went all out and told his team to fire away as many threes as possible. So that’s exactly what they did.
By half time Miami had 24 attempted threes and only 12 shots inside the line. And they were knocking them down.
Now this is the interesting part. I don’t agree with Joe Mazulla, and you can see for yourself.
The Celtics wouldn’t switch on ball screens at any cost. They liked to keep the matchups as they were, which created room for penetration by the ball handler, and obviously then the help has to come, leaving an open Miami shooter.
I absolutely don’t see any reason for them to be doing this. The Celtics have one of the lengthiest lineups, and a 5 man unit that can switch on anyone and not worry about matchup exploiting. Why are you doing this?
On top of that, Spoelstra sprinkled in a bit of his magic as well so watch Tyler Herro here:
This screen is a decoy, it’s not important. But watch him cut across at the same time as Jovic comes off of the pick and roll with Brown trailing. White has to be there and even if it’s a split second, you see the separation that Herro has. Bam sets another flair screen and this is a wide open look on the beautiful off ball movement.
But despite these 13 threes on a blistering 54% by the Heat, Boston still had a 3 point lead at the break led by their inside game.
If an underdog team is shooting lights out, and they’re still trailing at half time, that’s almost always an indication for a convincing win in the second half.
And something similar to that played out in this game but not how I imagined it.
In a completely unexpected turn of events, Miami kept up this unbelievable pace of outside shooting and finished the game with a franchise high in the playoffs of 23 three pointers on an astonishing 53 and a half percent. For the entire game.
Jimmy Butler knew how to enjoy and celebrate this major upset, and amazing game by his teammates.
And a loud mouth like him, would of course use this opportunity to do a bit of trolling as well…
This game to game drama is exactly what the playoffs are about.
On rategame, the app that I’m a part of, I gave this one a solid 7.2, and it seems that the rest of the viewers agree with me.
Moving on to OKC and the Pelicans, and I thought we might get another close one after the game 1 thriller ending. But I was so wrong because…
The Thunder jumped on New Orleans right from the beginning of the game, and it’s obvious that the Pelicans don’t have an answer defensively for Shai.
And Chet Holmgren is stretching the floor to the point where Valanciunas can’t be at 2 places at one. He can’t help on dribble penetration and be there to contest Holmgren’s pick and pop threes.
So he was feasting.
This was a 13 point lead for OKC at halftime and they never looked back as we got this…
This one was over early, and ended up being a complete 32 point blowout.
A 4.5 score on rategame is about what you’d expect for a wire to wire big win like this.
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Miami got their revenge for the game 1 loss but that’s nothing compared to Luka’s emotional revenge against the Clippers. You gotta watch exactly what took place right here in this video. Talk to you in the next one. Peace out.