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Miami Drawn-And-Third-Quartered

June 2, 2013  ·  2:17AM


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INDIANAPOLIS – It was a miserable way to go into halftime.

And yet it was a teachable moment.

The Indiana Pacers should have been kicking themselves over the way they played in the final eight minutes of the first half Saturday night, eight minutes that wouldn’t have defined their season but certainly could have ended it.

And yet the Pacers and their coach, Frank Vogel, turned that stretch of the second quarter into a “Hey, things could be worse!” halftime alignment that propelled them into a lethal third quarter. Indiana essentially won Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals with the other three quarters tied behind their backs, packing enough into one to carry them all the way to a Game 7 Monday night in Miami.

The final: 91-77. The third quarter: 29-15.

“Explain it? You seen it,” LeBron James said. “It was total domination by the Pacers in the third.”

Maybe it’s time to mint a new cliché. Maybe it’s not the last five minutes of NBA games that matter but the first 12 after intermission. For most of this hotly contested series between the East’s two best teams (never mind that Knicks No. 2 seed), the team that won the third quarter has won the game. The lone exception: Game 2 in Miami, when Indiana lost the quarter battle but won that war.

Granted, it hasn’t been a matter each time of only winning the third. But the team that emerges more focused and driven from the halftime locker room – and applies that, along with whatever strategic adjustments it discussed, over the next half hour or so of real time – has been the team in control that night.

No one is in control of this series at the moment, tied at 3-3. Miami has the home court Monday. And the experience in such pressure situations. And the confidence inherent in defending champions. And, oh yeah, Chris (Birdman) Andersen coming back from his one-game suspension (though backup-backup Joel Anthony filled in sufficiently with eight rebounds and three blocks).

Indiana, by contrast, will mostly have the bragging rights of the third quarter. After getting smoked 30-13 in those 12 minutes in Game 5 Thursday night at AmericanAirlines Arena, the Pacers flipped the script entirely.

And they did it by looking hard at the opportunities they already had squandered in the game.

In those final eight minutes of the half, Indiana had been its own worst enemy. The 31-25 lead it had scrapped and grunted for to that point? It vanished in a fraction of the time. Lance Stephenson threw a pass that big man Ian Mahinmi couldn’t handle for one turnover. Mahinmi got caught lingering in the lane for another. Guard Sam Young went strong to the rim for what could have been a statement dunk against Miami’s Chris Bosh – until it caromed right back out. Next trip down, veteran forward David West botched a dunk too. And Paul George already had one of his own in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, the Heat – with James on the bench – went on an 11-2 run that took all of 4 1/2 minutes. Wait, let’s repeat that: with James on the bench.

After James came back, the Pacers scored six straight points but Anthony’s tip-in and a runout dunk by the reigning MVP had Miami up 40-39. Indiana closed the half in blooper fashion, with a bad pass by Roy Hibbert and another failed dunk (at least Anthony got a hand on George’s throw-down attempt).

So what did Vogel do? The same guy who had scribbled “Be encouraged!!!” on their white board in Game 4 went with the half-full approach again.

“It wasn’t so much about getting on them for leaving plays out there,” Vogel said. “It was, ‘Look guys, we’re not even playing our best and it’s a one-point game. So just tighten the screws and do what we do.’ “

Or do what the Heat had done at the same point 48 hours earlier. “Last game our third quarter was really what let us down,” Hibbert said. “We tried to take advantage of that and come out aggressive.”

They came out hellacious. Hibbert’s spin around Anthony and driving slam at 5:49 of the third capped a 14-2 blitz by the Pacers. And it got worse for the Heat; George scored seven straight points, shaky reserve point guard D.J. Augustin dropped in a running jumper and Hibbert got in the lane again for a layup that pushed Indiana’s lead to 17.

“Basically everything we have to do to win this series, we gave up,” Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said. “And obviously we struggled with some open shots, open layups, opportunities in the open court, and those affected us on the other end.”

Miami needs to stay close on the boards, right? It got outrebounded 13-4. It needs to protect the paint, yes? It got outscored there 16-0 in the third. Take care of the ball, a basic for any team? The Heat had six turnovers that turned into eight points for Indiana and, for the Pacers, took some of the sting out of their nine turnovers (but only three points).

Bottom line for the quarter: Indiana had 23 possessions, scored on 13 and had nine turnovers. The Pacers made 12 of their 17 shots and Miami grabbed only one defensive rebound.

“We know how we give them up against a very good rebounding team,” Spoelstra said. “But they got some tip-ins from some non-blockouts. It seemed as if every tipped ball that went out to the free-throw line, loose ball, ended up in their hands. Those extra possessions in a possession series will dictate often the outcome of the game.”

Ironically, the only Miami player who did much of anything in the third – the Heat have been desperate to get him going through his series-long struggle – was Dwyane Wade, who scored nine of Miami’s 15 points compared to the one point he managed in his other 22 minutes played.

Indiana wasn’t quite free and clear after the third. West’s brain cramp on an inbounds pass with 2.6 seconds left in that period turned into giveaway free throws for James. James had nine more points in him for the fourth and Mike Miller came off Miami’s bench for two 3-pointers that sent a nervous murmur through Bankers Life Fieldhouse. In time, the Heat would get what had been a 17-point lead all the way down to four.

But West – playing through a respiratory infection that had him visibly worn down and a fever that Vogel said was “slightly over 100″ degrees – stemmed the bleeding with four manly buckets at opportune times. George hit a 3-pointer that got the lead up to 75-68. And Hibbert – after drawing an offensive foul on James that had the Miami star streaking downcourt in a shocked stage sprint  that earned him a technical – dropped in a layup over him that made it 81-68 with 3:55 to play.

That’s about the time that James’ facial expression and his teammates’ body language said good night to Saturday and shifted to Monday.

“It just needed one quarter,” James said of that dastardly third. “One quarter to separate the two teams.”

Now both teams are down to four. Any one of which will do.

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Posted in 2013 Conference Finals: Pacers-Heat / Comments (72) /

‘Birdman’ Sits, Heat’s Anthony Next Man Up

June 1, 2013  ·  3:14PM




INDIANAPOLIS – Miami forward Chris (Birdman) Andersen got his wings clipped for a night – he’s missing Game 6 of the Eastern Conference championship series Saturday for his altercation Thursday with Indiana’s Tyler Hansbrough. But it’s not as if NBA headquarters poured salt on his tail for the rest of the playoffs or his career.

“I’m not going to change who I am and how I play,” Andersen told reporters after Miami’s morning shootaround. “I just have to keep my composure a little better and be smarter and make the right decision the next time something like that happens.”

The next time “something like that happens,” if Andersen keeps his composure, it won’t happen at all. He started the incident with Hanbrough in the second quarter of Game 5, throwing a blindside shoulder into the Pacers forward as the two headed upcourt.

After Hansbrough got up off the court, the two banged chests. Then Andersen pushed Hansbrough back with a two-handed shove. Referee Marc Davis rushed over to push Andersen away from Hansbrough and the Heat forward briefly pushed back, grabbing at the ref’s wrist and arm.

That – resisting efforts to bring the altercation to an end, the league said – might have been the biggest reason Andersen’s flagrant-1 foul was upgraded to a flagrant-2 and he was hit with the one-game suspension. If his composure had kicked in at any point before that, he might have stayed eligible for one of his team’s biggest games of the season.

“I can’t regret anything. It is what it is, bro,” Andersen said.

The Birdman will be cooped up at the Heat’s hotel during Game 6, while coach Erik Spoelstra and the rest pick up the slack in rebounding, defensive and finishes at the rim that have made him so valuable of late. Spoelstra said backup big man Joel Anthony would get minutes normally reserved for Andersen but allowed for the possibility of other lineups and options.

Pacers coach Frank Vogel said his team would be prepared for a variety of Miami looks. “It’s not just going to be [Anthony],” Vogel said. “They’ll play [Chris] Bosh a little more at [center]. They’ll give [Udonis] Haslem more time. They’ve got plenty of different lineups they can throw at us that I don’t expect them to have any dip.”

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Posted in 2013 Conference Finals: Pacers-Heat / Comments (51) /

Can The Pacers Take The Heat To The Limit?

June 1, 2013  ·  10:00AM

 

Indiana Pacers coach Frank Vogel believes that the Eastern Conference finals “is going to be a series for the ages.” And it has certainly been terrific so far. But Vogel’s team will need another big performance in Game 6 on Saturday (8:30 p.m. ET, TNT) to really prove him right.

Emphasis on the word big.

In a series that has been a contrast in styles, the Pacers didn’t play theirs in Game 5. “Smash-mouth” basketball didn’t make the trip to Miami, as Indiana was limited to just 32 points in the paint, six offensive rebounds, and 15 free throw attempts. As terrific as LeBron James was offensively on Thursday, it was really the other end of the floor that determined the outcome.

“We understand that we’ve got to play a near perfect game to beat this team,” Vogel said after his team fell far short. “We believe we can reach that level.”

A near perfect game will require the Pacers’ starters to stay on the floor. Not only did their “barometer backcourt” of George Hill and Lance Stephenson combine to shoot 2-for-11, but foul trouble for both limited Indiana’s starting lineup to just 16 minutes on the floor together, their lowest total since Game 2 of the first round. And when Vogel is forced to go to his bench, the Pacers basically turn into the Bobcats.

Pacers efficiency, 2013 playoffs

Lineups MIN OffRtg DefRtg NetRtg +/-
Starting lineup 360 110.8 96.2 +14.6 +106
Other lineups 461 95.4 106.1 -10.7 -94
Total 820 102.2 101.8 +0.5 +12

OffRtg = Points scored per 100 possessions
DefRtg = Points allowed per 100 possessions
NetRtg = Point differential per 100 possessions

Though they’re in the same position they were in last year against the Heat, when they were eliminated in Game 6 at home, that series really has nothing to do with this one. As Vogel noted on Thursday, that Pacers team wasn’t the best defensive team in the league.

This one is, and it rebounded well from its first two losses in this series, winning Games 2 and 4 with two of its best offensive performances of the season. Though they’re down 3-2 with a potential Game 7 on the road, no one should be counting the Pacers out just yet.

But the Heat’s Game 5 victory was unique in that it was, by far, their most complete defensive performance of the series. Their rotations were sharper, they defended — as the Pacers like to do — without fouling, and they did a much better job of sending everyone to the glass and putting multiple bodies on Roy Hibbert when a shot went up.

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The Heat have been an offensive juggernaut all season, but their defense comes and goes. If they can carry Thursday’s performance on that end into Game 6, it will be difficult for Indiana to play that “near perfect” game they need to stay alive. As big as Hibbert is and as terrific as he’s played over the last month, he can’t rebound through multiple bodies.

Maybe we’ve seen the best of the Pacers, who have already taken a big step forward from last season. And maybe it’s too much to ask of them to beat the defending champs as many times in one series as the whole league did over the previous 3 1/2 months.

Or maybe they can take this series, which has been great already, to the limit.

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Posted in 2013 Conference Finals: Pacers-Heat, 2013 NBA Playoffs / Comments (27) /

Pressure Rising On Pacers’ Barometer Backcourt

May 31, 2013  ·  5:56PM

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HANGTIME HEADQUARTERS — Indiana coach Frank Vogel called Lance Stephenson, his team’s raw and inconsistent shooting guard, a “barometer” for how the Pacers are playing on any given night.

“When he’s bad, we typically struggle,” Vogel said after one of Stephenson’s upticks in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals. “When he’s good, we’re pretty darn good.”

The metaphor suits Stephenson, given his mercurial game and, at times, personality. But through five games of this series, it can’t be limited just to the third-year guy from Brooklyn, N.Y. Point guard George Hill, as low-key as they come and a local kid from Indianapolis’ Broad Ripple High School, has teamed with Stephenson in what has been a “barometer backcourt.”

And the atmospheric pressure definitely is rising as the Pacers and the Miami Heat head toward Game 6 Saturday night at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. How Hill and Stephenson go has tracked closely with how Indiana has gone.

Consider their combined performances in the Pacers’ two victories: 33.5 points, 11.5 rebounds and 8.0 assists, while shooting 47.9 percent (23-for-48).

Now look at how they’ve done in the three defeats: 14.3 points, 7.0 rebounds, 6.7 assists and 26-percent shooting.

During the 2012-13 regular season, as Stephenson established himself as a young but legitimate starter in scorer Danny Granger‘s absence (knee injury), he and Hill on average performed somewhere in between those extremes: 23.0 points, 7.6 rebounds, 7.6 assists and 45.0 percent field-goal shooting.

Even that would have been sufficient in the Pacers’ 90-79 Game 5 loss in Miami. Indiana’s starting front line was formidable – forwards Paul George (27) and David West (17) and center Roy Hibbert (22) combined for 66 points on 26-for-49 shooting. But Hill and Stephenson produced just four points on 0-for-4 shooting with three rebounds, four assists, six turnovers and 10 fouls.

Afterward, Hill looked like a deer in Miami’s headlights and Stephenson’s mood was darkening. Vogel and the Pacers need them at something approaching their winning numbers if they’re even going to push the Heat to a Game 7.

“It’s on me,” Vogel said. “I have to make sure those guys are involved and getting better looks. And if they’re out of synch, we’re going to struggle.”

The primary reasons for the Hill-Stephenson struggles was foul trouble. Stephenson barely broke a sweat before picking up two fouls in the game’s first 2:27. He eventually fouled out and logged only 28:09.

“I wasn’t really in the game, so we couldn’t be the team that we are,” Stephenson said, his confidence intact even if his focus was not.

Hill got in a funk after notching his third and fourth fouls in a span of 16 seconds early in the second half. Not coincidentally, that’s when the floor dropped out for the Pacers – they shot just 3-for-14 as a team and scored 13 points. Hill and Stephenson weren’t offering much offense of their own and weren’t initiating it for teammates either.

Meanwhile, the backup backcourt of D.J. Augustin and Sam Young was of little service. Those two combined for two points on 1-for-3 shooting with one rebound, no assists and three turnovers in 35 minutes.

Hill usually is a consistent player but he has had “handle” problems for the Pacers in this series and has made some poor decisions. He isn’t winning his matchup with Mario Chalmers that many figured would tilt his way. Also, it’s worth noting that he is only a couple of weeks removed from a concussion diagnosis from a blow he suffered against New York in the conference semis. After missing Game 5, he passed the league’s protocols for returning to action.

With Stephenson, it might be a different head situation entirely. He and LeBron James went at verbally it in Game 5 with some trash talk that rarely riles either man. But you’d never know if Stephenson stepped out of the moment for an instant and realized just whom he was jawing with.

“As a competitor you love challenges, and Lance is one of those guys who likes to talk some,” James said. “And I’m for it, too.”

Sometimes it is self-motivating, sometimes it can be distracting. Appeared Thursday to be more of the latter, a good indicator for the defending champs. As Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Stephenson: “He’s one of those out-of-the-box players that he can break your defense down, he can do it at the end of the shot clock, he can do it in transition, he can do it some ways that aren’t necessarily scripted.”

As for the Pacers up front, they know how important their guards are. Hibbert often has to “get his” off the glass himself because of Indiana’s struggles with entry passes. So getting only six boards instead of Game 4′s 12, and two on the offensive glass versus six, contributed to the problem as well.

Hibbert and George focused more on the young shooting guard after the setback.

“He’s going to have to accept that challenge right there,” Hibbert said. “It goes for everybody. … Lance is going to have to accept that challenge to go out there and play defense on the top player, the best player in the NBA, the MVP. Each one of us has to hold ourselves accountable.”

That goes double for the barometer backcourt, considering the storm that might be brewing.

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Posted in 2013 Conference Finals: Pacers-Heat / Comments (11) /

It’s Rarely Easy To Repeat, Heat

May 31, 2013  ·  2:57PM

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DALLAS — NBA playoff history is loaded with ambitious underdogs against steely defending champions. We’re seeing it now in the Eastern Conference finals as the upstart Indiana Pacers push the reigning champion Miami Heat to the limit. Game 6 in that series, with the Heat leading 3-2 after beating Indiana Thursday night, is Saturday night in Indianapolis (8:30 ET, TNT).

LeBron James (Issac Baldizon/NBAE)

LeBron James (Issac Baldizon/NBAE)

Indiana is not only up against a great team. It’s up against great odds. Historically speaking, when a best-of-7 series has been tied 2-2, the winner of Game 5 has won the series 83 percent of the time.

Still, nothing will come easy for Miami. Over the past 33 seasons, only nine teams have claimed the championship. (The Heat have done it twice.) Only four teams (the Lakers, Bulls, Rockets and Pistons) have won back-to-back titles. And a Miami repeat would give the Heat a chance to do what only two other teams have done: pull off a threepeat. (Michael Jordan’s Bulls did it twice; the Shaquille O’Neal-Kobe Bryant Lakers were the other ones.)

Indiana has had only one trip to the NBA Finals, 13 years ago, when the Pacers lost to the Lakers in six games in L.A.’s first leg of its threepeat. These Pacers have had their chances. In fact, they might look back on  Game 1 in Miami, when LeBron James beat them with a spin-drive to the left that beat the buzzer, as the game that cost them a second chance at The Finals.

Ominous, too, was the Heat’s 90-79 win Thursday night in Miami. The Pacers led 44-40 at halftime even after a handful of missed shots at the rim and a spate of turnovers. But James, after delivering a fiery speech to his huddled teammates, dominated the third quarter and carried Miami to the pivotal Game 5 victory.

The good news for the Pacers? Half the teams that lost Game 5 after being tied at 2-2 gave themselves a chance for a Game 7 by winning Game 6.

Here’s a look at the teams that have successfully defended their title since 1980 and the toughest challenges they faced: (more…)

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Posted in HT News / Comments (22) /

Birdman Should Sit For Manhandling Ref

May 31, 2013  ·  8:51AM

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When the Eastern Conference finals shifts back to Indianapolis for Game 6 Saturday night, Miami’s Chris “Birdman” Andersen needs to spectate from his hotel room or his aviary or whatever other perch he can find outside Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Because the NBA needs to deliver a one-game suspension for Andersen’s actions in a second-quarter skirmish.

Not just for what Andersen did to Pacers reserve forward Tyler Hansbrough, either. For his tussle with referee Marc Davis.

By now, the sequence of events involving Andersen and Hansbrough is widely known: Miami’s tightly wound big man, while trying to rebound, got nudged from behind by Indiana’s Paul George. Only he didn’t get George’s license plate — he apparently thought Hansbrough had delivered the bump. So as the two ran upcourt behind the play, he bumped “back” at Hansbrough, the collision sending the Indiana player sprawling.

Hansbrough, startled at first, took exception and Andersen was all too willing to continue what he had started. The two closed the distance between them and bumped chests, at which point Andersen sharply shoved Hansbrough back with two hands.

OK, that should have been enough to eject Andersen right there. The only difference between what Andersen did on the shove and what Chicago’s Nazr Mohammed did in shoving LeBron James in Game 3 of the semifinals was that James went sprawling, sliding several feet in what Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau referred to as a “flop.”

Hansbrough’s mistake, even as the NBA seems ripe to wring out flopping, looks to be not (ahem) selling the play to refs Danny Crawford, Jim Capers and Davis. He couldn’t even had he tried, because teammate Roy Hibbert was there to catch him.

So Andersen delivers two blows — both of which sure looked to be “unnecessary” and “excessive” — and yet, upon review, gets slapped only with a flagrant-1 foul. But the skirmish wasn’t over.

One of the referees, Davis, gets in front of Andersen and moves him backward away from Hansbrough to stop a possible escalation of the beef. What does Andersen do? He pushes back. He grabs Davis’ wrist with his right hand. He pushes on the referee’s arm with his left. All of this physical contact with a game official because he’s steamed, because he didn’t like getting bumped from behind or because, in some misguided way, he’s trying to ignite (incite?) his Heat teammates and/or the crowd at AmericanAirlines Arena.

That was the most disturbing thing about the incident. Andersen did enough to be ejected then — or, a little late, suspended now for one game — with his hits on Hansbrough. But he crossed the line by getting physical with Davis.

No way should any NBA referee be subject to that sort of wrestling or manhandling, lest people assume they’re just part of the act in Andersen’s dumb WWE display.

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Posted in 2013 Conference Finals: Pacers-Heat, 2013 NBA Playoffs / Comments (219) /

LeBron Returns To Cleveland Days To Push Heat To Game 5 Win

May 31, 2013  ·  1:54AM

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MIAMI – The last time the San Antonio Spurs were in The Finals, they swept LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. So maybe they’re happy to hear James say that he “kind of went back to my Cleveland days” in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals.

Dwyane Wade, playing with a bum knee, scored 10 points in 41 minutes. Chris Bosh, playing with a sprained ankle, scored seven points in 33 minutes. You could replace them with 2007 versions of Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden and there might not have been much of a difference on Thursday.

So, with his team down four at halftime, the MVP knew he had to take charge. He did just that, scoring or assisting on 25 of the Heat’s 30 third-quarter points and leading them to a 90-79 victory over the Indiana Pacers.

“We were in wait mode in the first half, instead of going and getting it,” James said afterward. “I took it upon myself to stop waiting and just go.”

The Pacers won the other three quarters, 66-60. The Heat won the third, 30-13. And they’re taking their 3-2 series lead back to Indianapolis for Game 6 on Saturday (8:30 p.m. ET, TNT).

If the 2013 Heat are suddenly the 2007 Cavs, they don’t have much of a chance against the Spurs. Heck, they might not make it through this series. But 2013 LeBron James is not 2007 LeBron James, and that may be all the difference.

Though their 40 first-half points were as much about pace as they were about efficiency, the Heat found something that worked — James in the high post — in the third. It wasn’t a new look for the Heat, but it was in such large doses. And the Pacers couldn’t stop it, as Miami scored 25 points on the 16 possessions the Heat went to it, including 13 points on six possessions in the 12 minutes that changed the game.

Those 30 third-quarter points came on just 20 possessions, as the Heat, despite the ineffectiveness of two of their three All-Stars, looked like the offensive force they were throughout the regular season. This was a level of efficiency that those Cavs never reached, in part because there was never so much more variety to James’ game in Cleveland. (more…)

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Posted in 2013 Conference Finals: Pacers-Heat, 2013 NBA Playoffs / Comments (99) /

Stronger Work From Bosh Vital For Miami

May 30, 2013  ·  11:40AM


Chris Bosh may be the Miami Heat player who needs to foul out.

That, at least, would be an indication that he is taking his defensive work seriously in his Eastern Conference finals matchup with Indiana center Roy Hibbert.

An over-the-back, loose-ball foul every now and then would make a statement. So would sending Hibbert to the line a little more often (the biggest Pacer already has shot 31 free throws, more than any Miami player, but too few at Bosh’s hand).

Instead, Bosh’s primary concern through the first four games, with Game 5 Thursday night at AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami (8:30, TNT), seems to be staying eligible. On multiple plays Tuesday in which he might have sought contact to thwart an easy bucket – or better yet, save LeBron James or another teammate from having to do it and risk a whistle – Bosh has been passive. A little bit of foul trouble, on top of his sore ankle, and avoiding a sixth foul soars to the top of his priority list.

Chris Bosh defends Roy Hibbert (Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE)

Chris Bosh defends Roy Hibbert
(Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE)

Wait, did we say sixth? Since signing with Miami in July 2010, Bosh has had only nine games – out of the 256 he has played as part of the Big 3 – in which he committed as many as five fouls. He hasn’t fouled out once. Fact is, Bosh has only fouled out of a game just twice since the end of the 2005-06 season; eight of his 10 disqualifications came in his first three seasons, back when Bosh was establishing both his reputation and the manner in which he would play defensively in this league.

Yeah, yeah, we know: Wilt Chamberlain never fouled out of a game in his 13 NBA seasons. But Wilt could get by on sheer size when dragging four or five fouls around late in games. Bosh isn’t built that way. At his position of power forward, let alone “center,” foul trouble comes with the job. Tim Duncan has fouled out 20 times in his career. Kevin Garnett, 27 times. If you’re active and engaged and you take pride in your defense, it’s going to happen.

But it has happened only twice in the past seven years for Bosh — and not at all over the last three.

Obviously, disqualification is no one’s goal. But Bosh will shy away from the tough stuff that might deprive him of court time earlier in the game, too (two fouls in the first quarter or a third in the second). That doesn’t lend itself to the by-whatever-means-necessary mentality of the playoffs.

Does anyone think Hibbert’s natural inclinations take him toward, rather than away from, the elbows, forearms and shoulders down low? Hardly. But as Hibbert said after Game 4: “I’m just trying to do my part and create extra possessions and try to be tough. It’s a mental thing, really. Do you want to go in there and bang with LeBron, Chris Bosh and Birdman [Chris Andersen] or would you rather just be on the outskirts of the paint and just say ‘I’m going to get back in transition?’ … You have to throw yourself in there and that’s one of the aspects I try to bring if I don’t have the ball in my hands.”

Hibbert is averaging 22.8 points and 12.0 rebounds in the series and, no, he hasn’t fouled out either. But that’s just an indicator, cited in Bosh’s case to illustrate the way he’s playing and to juxtapose it with James’ rare DQ Tuesday.

Bosh is averaging 14.0 points and 3.3 rebounds this round, and it’s that latter number that is a problem for the Heat, to the point of being unacceptable and a major source of his team’s woes with the series tied 2-2.

The world has been told repeatedly about the 6-foot-10 power forward’s grand sacrifice in a) playing as Miami’s nominal starting “center” and b) doing so without bulking up or reconfiguring his game to something more traditional as a low-post banger. He has been asked to draw the other guys’ big men away from the paint with his range and touch, sometimes as a pick-and-pop but often as a spot-up shooter.

That might explain Bosh’s total of two offensive rebounds in four games (the same number as guards Mario Chalmers and Ray Allen). But 11 in four games off the defensive glass? Nobody is pulling Bosh away from the paint at that end of the floor. In fact, Hibbert (26 offensive rebounds) and David West (12) are pounding inside like few other 4-5 tandems in the league, yet Bosh’s shaky fundamentals in holding position and boxing out are getting exploited.

For what it’s worth, Bosh seems to get it. “We had them right where we wanted them but every time we would get a stop, especially in the fourth quarter, we didn’t come up with the rebound,” he said Tuesday. “They got too many offensive rebounds.”

Indiana is plus-31 in rebounds through four games – with 61 on offense to Miami’s 92 defensive boards – and plus-33 in second-chance points. Unless those margins head south in the coming days, Miami is in trouble and coach Erik Spoelstra knows it.

“You have to get into the fight,” he said. “The thing about it, when you have a front line like that and an aggressive team and that’s their nature, they don’t make it easy. Conversely, we don’t make it easy on them in our game.  That’s what this is about.

“If we don’t get into that battle every single possession, they impose their will,” Spoelstra continued. ” That’s their game.  And they’re very good at it. When we get into that battle and we’re winning those battles, the script flips, and now they have to deal with a lot of things that we can impose on them.”

In last year’s East semifinal series against the Pacers, the Heat played without Bosh for the final five games due to his abdominal strain. They’re playing without him now more than they should be, for reasons entirely of style and will.

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Posted in 2013 Conference Finals: Pacers-Heat / Comments (24) /

Hang Time Podcast (Episode 119) Featuring CNN’s Wayne Drash

May 29, 2013  ·  6:54PM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS — The San Antonio Spurs were supposed to be over the hill. And the Miami Heat unstoppable.

Good thing they have to play the games.

Because our expectations of what we would see in the conference finals and what we have seen is totally different. The Memphis Grizzlies were no match for the might Spurs, getting swept in a Western Conference finals that was supposed to be a battle of heavyweights. Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and crew have more left in the tank than some of us realized.

The Heat and Indiana Pacers are deadlocked 2-2 in the Eastern Conference finals and it’s the Heat, and not the Pacers, who have looked extremely vulnerable in certain spots (especially down low, courtesy of Roy Hibbert and David West). LeBron James has been the best player on the floor night after night, but he’s going at it without the superstar help (where you at Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh?) he’s used to having with the Heat.

Then there’s the Lance Stephenson experience, a phenomenon that has to be witnessed live to truly appreciate the emotional roller coaster ride that is the Pacers’ fearless swingman.

In addition to playoff talk and coaching carousel news, we got the chance to spend a few minutes with CNN’s Wayne Drash, the co-author of a fantastic new book, “On These Courts.” The book, which started as a story on CNN.com, chronicles former NBA All-Star Penny Hardaway‘s return to his Memphis roots to help a friend with cancer coach at-risk youth and the magical journey that grew out of that relationship.

As always, there is never a dull moment on Episode 119 of the Hang Time Podcast … 

LISTEN HERE:

As always, we welcome your feedback. You can follow the entire crew, including the Hang Time Podcast, co-hosts Sekou Smith of NBA.com,  Lang Whitaker of NBA.com’s All-Ball Blog and renaissance man Rick Fox of NBA TV, as well as our new super producer Gregg (just like Popovich) Waigand and the best engineer in the business,  Jarell “I Heart Peyton Manning” Wall.

– To download the podcast, click here. To subscribe via iTunes, click here, or get the xml feed if you want to subscribe some other, less iTunes-y way.

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Film Study: Pacers’ ‘Smash-Mouth’ Offense Thriving Against Heat

May 29, 2013  ·  12:08PM

 

HANG TIME NEW JERSEY – The most amazing thing about the Eastern Conference finals thus far is how efficient the two offenses have been.

Based on *an estimate of possessions, the league’s No. 1 defense (Indiana) has allowed 110.9 points per 100 possessions and the league’s No. 19 offense (Indiana again) has scored 111.3. It’s a small sample size, but both of those numbers would have led the league in the regular season.

*Possessions = FGA + (0.44*FTA) + TO – OREB

And my own (unofficial) possession counts have both teams scoring a little bit more efficiently than the estimates.

MIAMI INDIANA
Game PTS POSS OffRtg PTS POSS OffRtg
Game 1 103 98 105.1 102 97 105.2
Game 2 93 87 106.9 97 86 112.8
Game 3 114 86 132.6 96 86 111.6
Game 4 92 83 110.8 99 82 120.7
Total 402 354 113.6 394 351 112.3

The Heat shot just 39 percent in Game 4 on Tuesday, including 14-for-48 from outside the paint. But they were 24-for-27 from the line and committed just six turnovers. They scored on just one of their final nine possessions, but had scored seven straight times before that and still scored more than a point per possession (22/21) in the fourth quarter.

Although the Pacers showed LeBron James more bodies on his post touches and the MVP seemed a little more passive (11 of his 18 shots came from outside the paint and he attempted just six free throws) in Game 4, defense was Miami’s bigger problem … and has been throughout the series.

The Pacers aren’t a good shooting team and they’re turnover-prone. But they score with second-chance opportunities and trips to the free throw line, “smash-mouth basketball” as Frank Vogel calls it.

Indiana has smash-mouthed Miami in this series. In fact, the Pacers have more than twice as many offensive rebounds (61) and more than twice as many free throw attempts (141) in four conference finals games than the Spurs did (28, 66).

Game 4 was a little unique in that the Pacers outscored the Heat, 50-32, in the paint. Roy Hibbert scored 20 of those 50 points, as much a force on offense as he has been on defense throughout the season.

The Heat have been doing a good job of fronting the post, making it difficult for the Pacers to throw direct entry passes to Hibbert or David West. But Indiana has been able to get them the ball using other action to set up entry passes.

Here, in the first quarter of Game 4, George Hill runs a pick-and-roll with Hibbert. This allows Hibbert to establish deep post position against Chris Andersen, who had jumped out to help on the screen. Two passes later, Hibbert scores on a short jump hook …


.

On this play, Hibbert is stationed on the weak side as Hill and West run a pick-and-roll. This draws just enough of Chris Bosh‘s attention to allow Hibbert to seal his man as the ball is swung. Hibbert misses the jump hook, but Bosh fails to box out, and Hibbert gets one of the biggest baskets of the game …


. (more…)

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Posted in 2013 Conference Finals: Pacers-Heat, 2013 NBA Playoffs, Film Study / Comments (63) /

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