Pacers vs. Heat: Miami Shows Championship Mettle in Series Win over Indiana

In dispatching the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals with a Game 6 win in Indianapolis Thursday night, the Miami Heat showed the kind of championship mettle it will take for this version of the Heat to accomplish what it couldn't last season. 

There have been times over the past two weeks that many have counted out Miami.

When Chris Bosh—Miami's only real scoring threat in the frontcourt—went down with an injury in Game 1, many wondered how the Heat would contend with the Pacers' inside duo of Roy Hibbert and David West.

When Hibbert eventually got to Miami in Game 3, scoring 19 points and grabbing 18 rebounds in a blowout win in Indiana, others pondered if Miami's second attempt at winning a championship would come crashing down in just the second round. 

When Dwyane Wade continued to struggle during the first half of Game 4, just nights after Wade had scored a playoff-low five points on 2-for-13 shooting in Game 3, the talking heads were ready to write off the suddenly one-star Heat. 

Even a cheap shot from Indiana's Tyler Hansbrough—followed by retaliatory shots from Udonis Haslem and Dexter Pittman that kept the two out of Game 6 with suspensions—couldn't keep this determined bunch from advancing past the Pacers and into the conference finals for the second straight season. 

There's no doubting that we learned a few things about this group over the last two weeks.

This is still a flawed team—a team that needs heroic performances from its superstars more than ever now that Bosh is on the mend. This is a roster that doesn't lack holes—holes the Pacers found some success in exposing at times during their six-game series. 

But there's also no doubt that Miami has learned to deal with that adversity and turn it into a competitive advantage. 

When the Pacers led 54-46 to start the second half of Game 4—a scoreline that, if it held up, would have gave Indiana a 3-1 lead in the series—James and Wade took over. Never mind that Wade had just gotten his knee drained nights before. This duo wasn't about to go down 3-1. 

James and Wade scored 28 of Miami's 30 points in the third quarter, which helped turn an eight-point deficit into a six-point lead heading into the fourth. James then helped closed the door on the win in the fourth quarter, finishing the night's work with 40 points, 18 rebounds, nine assists, two steals and two blocks. 

Wade scored 30 on 13-of-23 shooting just nights after his worst playoff performance of his decorated NBA career. 

Miami even got 14 points on 5-of-6 shooting from Haslem, a role player helping to band-aid the loss of Bosh on the frontcourt. 

Those trends continued through Games 5 and 6. 

James and Wade took each game by the throat, not stopping the squeeze until the life of the Pacers' 2011-12 season was gone. The two combined for 58 points, 13 rebounds and 11 assists in a blowout Game 5 win, and then Wade went off for 41 points on 17-of-25 shooting Thursday night to put the dagger through Indiana.

Simply put, it was a three-game stretch from two players that has few equals historically.

But James and Wade also got contributions in Game 6 from role players like Mario Chalmers, who scored 15, and Mike Miller, who hit four big threes in a spot-up shooting role that so many envisioned in him when the Heat acquired him two summers ago. 

And what about that gaping hole down low that Hibbert and West would expose time and time again? It simply didn't happen down the stretch. 

Hibbert and West combined for 18, 18 and 36 in Games 4, 5 and 6, respectively. The 36 points in Game 6 came with both Haslem and Pittman unavailable. 

Overall, the big men averaged just 24 combined points over the final three games, which wasn't nearly enough to make up for what Wade and James were doing on the other end of the floor. 

There is no doubting that the Indiana Pacers had the Miami Heat on the ropes in this series. If you would have asked me at halftime of Game 4 who was headed to the Eastern Conference finals, I wouldn't have hesitated to pick the Pacers. 

But when push finally came to shove, this Heat weren't ready to have their 2011-12 season go up in smoke. Wade and James, who were each so heavily criticized early in this series, put Miami on their backs and won three straight games. 

Along the way, they proved that this Heat team is different. There is an ability to deal with adversity that always hasn't been apparent since James came to South Beach. 

That change may eventually be enough to alter the outcome of what happened to this mostly unchanged roster from last season.