2011 Eastern Conference Finals Bulls - Heat : Everybody loves Udonis

He basically rants against the words of Thibs without regards to the points you had made above regarding pace and turnovers…

And Doug is just wrong with this statement:

The outcome of this game had nothing to do with defense.

I actually the outcome of the game had quite a bit to do with defense, and specifically the Bulls inability to make key stops and as the Dr. noted, to force turnovers which lead to easy Bulls buckets.

So there are some explanations on the +/-, but it’s not like the Heat flipped a switch when he was on the floor. He replaced some of Bosh’s production from Game One (as did Wade and James) and, as you noted, was a rare non-useless contributor for Miami. But if we can get a Boozer/Haslem matchup I would take that.

The Bulls Game Two performance was the worst effective FG% of the season I believe, by a large margin. Unless James or Wade raises their game to vintage Jordan big-game levels the Bulls win this series if they make their open shots.

I think the Heat have dome a somewhat decent job of forcing Rose out of the paint. But Rose did shoot 10 times in the paint, including 3 of 4 shots in the 4th quarter. In the article you linked to the guy mentions that Rose got his shot blocked a lot by Miami – but than goes on to say Rose gets his shot blocked a lot. Which is true. He is one of the league leaders in having his shot blocked – which is understandable for a 6’3 guy trying to shoot over 6’11 and 6’9 guys. So I don’t think its that extraordinary that Miami was also able to swat a couple away.

Its not that I don’t think Miami is playing good defense on Rose – I think Anthony and Bosh are doing as good job as anyone all year of cutting of his penetration to the rim in the halfcourt. But to say Wade and Lebron are doing some extraordinary job of keeping him out of the paint is to ignore the fact that he got 8 assists, many times directly off penetration and that he only had 2 turnovers. We’ve seen Rose play worse against defensive pressure in the Indiana and Atl series. So what is it about what Miami did in Game 2 that is so extraordinarily different than what Indiana or to a lesser extent Atl did?

Wade had 2 blocks (1 definitely on Boozer) and Lebron had 0. So they aren’t chasing him down from behind – they aren’t making him the turn the ball over and they aren’t keeping him out of the paint. Basically they are just trapping him everytime and he is usually giving up the ball. That is why I said in the game thread that the Heat are begging Boozer to score 30. The Bulls run side and pick rolls and they leave Boozer open 10 ft from the basket. Rose only really started to force things when it became clear the Bulls weren’t going to score running the traditional sets.

I mean he got off 10 shots within 5ft of the basket and only hit 2. Unless you are saying Bosh and Anthony and Haslem have some extraordinary ability to alter shots that Al Horford and Josh Smith didn’t have (who seemed to block Rose’s shot far more often) its hard for me to say they are forcing him to take shots he normally wouldn’t take. I think normally he would finish 2 or 3 more of those drives to the basket and all of the sudden we are talking about a 10-23, 27 pt 8 ast performance.

It’s about time.

Dallas (twice), Denver, Boston, Miami and Orlando.

Don’t fool yourself. You’re also giving Miami too much credit

As if any one of us was like “hmm I wonder who this Allen Iverson fella he speaks of”

So I can kinda (just kinda) understand why he thinks AI is so witty. Based on what He thinks witty is and what it looks like to him.

they wanna milk this thing for all it’s worth. Playing on a Sunday is going to get you more viewers then like a Friday night when everyone is out. I would think.

I also think having long periods between games makes for a longer series but it will pickup soon. The Oprah thing screwed shit up. The game was to be on Monday and Wednesday but still there was a 4 day gap.

Basically I think the NBA/TNT wants this puppy to go 7.

prob why it got pushed out beyond 2 days rest

Do you realize the playoffs started almost a month ago? A month!