Series Thread: NBA Finals: Los Angeles Lakers vs. Miami Heat

[DJ Fieri]

Oladipo's time in Indy is not for long......he wants out. Twitter is great!!!!

 

[wildturkey]

Lol. This is awesome

Jimmy Butler and the Heat are caught in a barista battle in the NBA bubble

Business is booming for Jimmy Butler's Big Face Coffee. But his monopoly on the hotel-room caffeine fix is over.

www.espn.com

 

[Shanemansj13]

Lebron has only been favored in 2 of his 9 NBA Finals appearances. 1-1 in those Finals. This will only be the 3rd time.

 

[wildturkey]

Again,

if you are arguing from the standpoint that nobody can guard LeBron, okay.

The Heat have more big bodied, athletic, defensive minded wings than any other team I can think of. And they are able to hide lesser defenders on guys like Danny Green and KCP.

The Lakers appear to be the better team, but the narrative that the Heat can’t match up just isn’t accurate. They match up quite well, IMO.

This series is going to come down to
theses things:

Lakers:
1) LeBron and AD need to be great
2) role players need to make open shots
3) Vogel needs to be faster with adjustments than he has been all playoffs. Can’t take him 3 games to figure out his rotations against a team that can really test the Laker style. I struggle to see a role for McGee here

Heat:
1) Bam must stay out of foul trouble
2) Shooters have to hit shots
3) Spoelstra has to win the coaching matchup by a good bit

Depends on how Miami plays. If they stick with playing zone, having both Howard/McGee and Davis on the floor is likely gonna have too many people clogging the paint and not enough shooters on the floor to break the zone. Even if you have McGee or Howard be the guy attacking the middle of the zone at the FT, Miami will probably be content with Davis parked at the 3 point line (plus McGee and Howard aren't good enough passers to make this work anyway).

It'd be beneficial for Miami to stick to the zone and force LA to play small. On the other side of the ball, if a center is on the floor for LA, that player is matching up with Bam while Davis is quick and nimble enough to guard out to the perimeter and bother any of Miami's shooters. All that length out there, along with LA's other good defensive players (Lebron, KCP, Caruso, Green, Rondo) should make things tough on Miami on offense if Howard/McGee are in the game. But if they force LA small, that means Davis has to play Bam and they are forced to play Kuzma or Morris more. They will absolutely lose players like Herro and Robinson in the wash at some point

 

[Shaqdaddy11]

Did you watch the regular season games? Bam clearly isn't the same player he was at the start of the season. This isn't Bam from November or early December which was the 2x they played the Lakers. Also the heat as a whole got better defensively since then and the primary defender on AD in those games is now the biggest cheerleader on our bench

I say LA in 6, but doesn't mean I don't think Butler and Bam can't slow Lebron/AD down as well as most could...which doesn't mean they wont "get theirs".

They are a tough matchup for anyone.....but they wont have their way with Miami more than they would most based on this matchup IMO.

Yeah, your original comment was wrong.

Bam might literally be the best defensive matchup in the entire league for AD and Butler/Crowder, Iggy, Derrick Jones JR and even Bam can take turns on LeBron.

AD is a better player than Bam and nobody can actually guard him effectively, so he should post better numbers. But the Heat match up pretty damn well.

Wait, hold up let's get one thing straight, i'm not here to shit on the Heat. The opposite in fact. They've been nothing but impressive as a whole ever since Lebron left six years ago and i've got a lot of respect for the organization.

But let's be honest here, they don't match up very well with the Lakers. AD is a lot better than Bam and Lebron is a lot better than Jimmy. That's no slight on them, it's just the way it is.

Yes I admit, I was premature to compare the games the two teams played at the beginning of the year but if the series had gone 2-0 in the favor of the Heat, somebody would have mentioned that too by now. A lot has changed since December and the Heat have gotten significantly better. But so have the Lakers.

 

[TurnUpTheHeat]

Let's bet 500, if I win I get 500......you win you get 1,500?

Where I went to school , thats 3-1.
Ill put up 500 for 2500 if you’d like.

 

[Wamu]

Some NBA playoff trivia. LeBron is just the 3rd star to face his former team in the Finals. Can anyone name the other two? And don't cheat. The answer's below.









































1957- Ed Macauley (St. Louis Hawks) vs. the Celtics. And 1967- Wilt (76ers) vs. the S.F. Warriors

 

[Shaqdaddy11]

Some NBA playoff trivia. LeBron is just the 3rd star to face his former team in the Finals. Can anyone name the other two? And don't cheat. The answer's below.









































1957- Ed Macauley (St. Louis Hawks) vs. the Celtics. And 1967- Wilt (76ers) vs. the S.F. Warriors

I went as far back as the early 80s off the top of my head when I started watching basketball but couldn’t think of any so it’s got to be long before that.

I was going to guess

Spoiler

Wilt

but there’s no way I would have gotten the other one

 

[dtgold88]

You really need to stop defending wiggy and this isn't about what anyone else has said. Because nobody has repeatedly talked shit about the Heat and the Lakers/LeBron like he has.

comment wasn't meant to defend Wiggy.....just think it's absurd not to give whoever wins their due. and many wont.

 

[Shaqdaddy11]

He might...but so have others which I think is absurd.

The “others” are self proclaimed trolled

 

[dtgold88]

Wait, hold up let's get one thing straight, i'm not here to shit on the Heat. The opposite in fact. They've been nothing but impressive as a whole ever since Lebron left six years ago and i've got a lot of respect for the organization.

But let's be honest here, they don't match up very well with the Lakers. AD is a lot better than Bam and Lebron is a lot better than Jimmy. That's no slight on them, it's just the way it is.

Yes I admit, I was premature to compare the games the two teams played at the beginning of the year but if the series had gone 2-0 in the favor of the Heat, somebody would have mentioned that too by now. A lot has changed since December and the Heat have gotten significantly better. But so have the Lakers.

seems like you also implied there were teams who would be better equipped to stop Lebron/AD which is absurd if you were.

 

[dtgold88]

The “others” are self proclaimed trolled

Not really talking in here.....but I guess they could still be trolling.

 

[DJ Fieri]

Where I went to school , thats 3-1.
Ill put up 500 for 2500 if you’d like.

Nah, not giving 5-1 odds.

 

[Shaqdaddy11]

seems like you also implied there were teams who would be better equipped to stop Lebron/AD which is absurd if you were.

Yes there are. Clippers and Bucks actually.

 

[Wamu]

comment wasn't meant to defend Wiggy.....just think it's absurd not to give whoever wins their due. and many wont.

But it kinda sounds like you are defedning him. You said in comment # 92 that "he might". Meaning you're not sure if wiggy's talked nonstop shit about the Heat and the Lakers/LeBron. If you wanna believe he's never done that it's fine. But you're in the minority on this one. I agree it's absurd not to give the proper credit to whoever wins it all though.

 

[tlance]

Pop was good once but he is past his prime.

That is foolish.

He just doesn’t have good players anymore.

No reason to think he can’t coach just as effectively now as he could 3 years ago.

 

[tlance]

My only issue is that the narrative isn't that the Heat can't match up with the Lakers. The narrative, or at least MY narrative, is that the Heat don't have anyone that can guard the best player on the Lakers. The Heat, like you said, do match up quite well against the Lakers TEAM, but not against the Lakers best player. Other than that, I don't disagree with anything you've said.

That is my point though. They do.

In fact, there isn’t another team in the entire league that matches up better with the Lakers than Miami does.

 

[Shanemansj13]

Lets think about something else for a second. The Lakers are the favorites in this series but they are only favored bc of Lebron, well they do have AD too but the 3-7 best players in this series are on Miami.
1. Lebron 2. AD.... 3. Butler 4. Bam 5. Dragic 6. Herro 7. Crowder... 8. Kuzma

Just like any Lebron-led team (other than those great Miami teams), if you take away Lebron from this roster...they don't make the playoffs. This isn't a good team. This is what it looks like:

PG - Caruso
SG - KCP
SF - Kuzma
PF - AD
C - Howard

Bench
Rondo
Green
Howard

 

[bksballer89]

Depends on how Miami plays. If they stick with playing zone, having both Howard/McGee and Davis on the floor is likely gonna have too many people clogging the paint and not enough shooters on the floor to break the zone. Even if you have McGee or Howard be the guy attacking the middle of the zone at the FT, Miami will probably be content with Davis parked at the 3 point line (plus McGee and Howard aren't good enough passers to make this work anyway).

It'd be beneficial for Miami to stick to the zone and force LA to play small. On the other side of the ball, if a center is on the floor for LA, that player is matching up with Bam while Davis is quick and nimble enough to guard out to the perimeter and bother any of Miami's shooters. All that length out there, along with LA's other good defensive players (Lebron, KCP, Caruso, Green, Rondo) should make things tough on Miami on offense if Howard/McGee are in the game. But if they force LA small, that means Davis has to play Bam and they are forced to play Kuzma or Morris more. They will absolutely lose players like Herro and Robinson in the wash at some point

I don't know if the heat will play much zone in this series. I think they'll play the lakers similar to how they played Milwaukee

 

[GNG]

That is foolish.

He just doesn’t have good players anymore.

No reason to think he can’t coach just as effectively now as he could 3 years ago.

He has lost his touch.