The highly anticipated matchup between Miami Heat and Boston Celtics is finally here.
The “Key Three” of LeBron, Wade and Bosh will take on the “Core Four” of Garnett, Pierce, Allen and Rondo.
Even Paul Pierce shares the enthusiasm. “I’m excited. This is a great stage for basketball. It’s going to be great for fans and the guys we have here love these types of series”.
Ever since the Heat acquired LeBron and Bosh in assembling its “Big Three”, everyone has been waiting for a Celtics-Heat playoff series.
“We knew it was going to probably happen at one point or another,” Pierce said. “Before the season if we were going to where we needed to be as a championship team we knew we were going to have to play Miami. So it’s finally here and I’m sure it’s the much anticipated battle everybody’s been waiting on”.
As Celtics coach, Doc Rivers stated, “We assumed that when they put this team together that, if we wanted to put another banner up, we’d probably have to go through them. So it’s official. And that’s good”.
In the regular season, the Celtics won the first three meetings, including two in the first nine games of the season. The Heat won the last matchup in the beginning of April that decided the second seed in the Eastern conference and ultimately home court in this series.
LeBron boldly expressed this week, “Now we’re preparing for lunch, I guess. This was a series everyone wanted”. However, the Celtics still remain a playoff antagonist for LeBron. In two of the last three postseasons, the Celtics have been responsible for his demise from the playoffs. LeBron has long struggled against the Celtics’ stifling defense.
The Celtics’ playoff defense strives on taking opponents out of their comfort zone by forcing teams out of their first and second options and making players make individual plays. Hence, it is imperative that Bosh is a strong contributor along Wade and LeBron for the Heat to be successful.
Chris Bosh will be the key for Miami and could be the difference in the series. “LeBron and Wade are LeBron and Wade”, said Doc Rivers. “They’re going to be great players before the series; they’ll be great players after it. But when Bosh plays great, then their team is great. He’s the key guy for them”.
For the Celtics, Doc knows that, quite simply, the Celtics are their own worst enemy. For a team that takes pride in good ball movement, turnovers are like kryptonite against the Heat. The Celtics play unselfishly and share the ball with numerous passes in a single possession. This leads to many clean open shots.
However, often the Celtics find themselves racking up turnovers with their non-sticky hands.
During the second half of game four against the Knicks in which the Celtics had established a healthy lead of 23 points and were cruising to a series sweep, Doc was irate with his team for allowing the Knicks to make a mini-run after successive turnovers who cut the deficit to four in the fourth quarter.
Doc knows how detrimental turnovers are to the Celtics’ success in the postseason and especially against the Heat. In the first two meetings in the season, the Celtics had established large leads only to win narrowly by margins of 8 and 5 points. Miami is a team where a 10-point, even a 20-point deficit, is misleading and can vanish very quickly when turnovers start to amass. The Heat thrive in transition with two of the game’s best open-court players in LeBron and Wade.
Moreover, the respective benches for Boston and Miami could be decisive. Celtics President of Basketball Operations, Danny Ainge pointed out that “getting a boost from the bench could be huge”. Boston’s bench showed promising signs towards the end of the Knicks series. Glen Davis is slowly coming back into form and along with Delonte West’s shooting, should be able to keep the floor spaced for the post in also helping Jeff Green focus on defending LeBron. Green’s ability to play strong defense against LeBron, as well as occasional offense, will be crucial for the Celtics in providing Pierce ample rest
Shaq is also travelling with the team with the intention to play during the series. Shaq, along with the encouraging Jermaine O’Neal, adds a strong presence in the post; an area that is of high concern to Miami who do not have a true big man.
For the Heat, point guard Mario Chalmers and centre Joel Anthony should start, despite Spolestra’s reluctance, in place of Bibby and Ilgauskas. Spolestra believes they add spark off of a very thin bench. There have been suggestions that Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller will return from lengthy injuries to take part in the series. However, it would be doubtful that either could have a considerable effect, particularly Haslem who has missed almost the entire season.
But it boils down to the seven All-Stars especially Rondo who has to find a way against Miami “Rondo Defense” of the typical sag-and-challenge defense that most teams employ. Rondo will likely be defended by a combination of Bibby, Chalmers, Wade and Lebron throughout the game. Regardless of the defense, Garnett surmised it best when he asserted “We just need Shorty to be aggressive. Rondo’s a pain when he’s aggressive. When he’s stacking the stat line he’s a problem to deal with and we’re a problem to deal with”.
While many are confidently predicting the Heat to win in six or seven games, there are still plenty of questions to be answered.
The Heat face unprecedented expectation and have already been heavily scrutinised in its first year of the “Big Three” era. LeBron may have bitten off more than he could chew with his comments about “lunchtime” as the Heat are under pressure.
For the Celtics, they may regret its late season slump in which they finished the season 10-11 in its last 21 games and ultimately relinquishing home court advantage, not only in this series but also throughout the playoffs. They demonstrated that they could play at a high level in a hostile environment in New York. Over the last two seasons, the Celtics have succeeded on the road, which puts pressure on Miami to protect home-court advantage in games one and two.
For mine, expect the Celtics to win in six.
One thing is for sure though. This will get heated.
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