NBA Finals 2013: Burning Questions for Spurs vs. Heat Heading into Series
If there is one overarching truth about the NBA playoffs, it's that the best teams almost always wind up in the NBA finals.
How the mix of coaching, talent, depth and chemistry is calibrated on a yearly basis changes, but come early April, we usually know who the best teams are. And—Russell Westbrook injury aside—the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat represent the cream of the crop in the NBA. From the moment Westbrook went down, Thursday night's Game 1 felt almost pre-ordained.
On the surface, you'd think you could say that about other sports as well, but history flies in the face of that assumption. The NFL's playoffs are such a yearly exercise in unpredictability that the goal for every team each season is to "just get in." And every year it seems like one or two NHL and MLB teams make a shocking run deep into the postseason, spurred by red-hot goaltending (NHL) or solid pitching (MLB).
By nature, basketball and the NBA works against such unpredictability, but that's not necessarily a bad thing—especially when it comes to the finals. It may feel like most saw this series coming from a mile away—or at least said they did after San Antonio's out-classing of Memphis became apparent early on in the Western Conference Finals—but that ignores the real point heading into this series.
These teams are so good and so well-coached that anyone who says they "know" anything at this point is posturing.
LeBron, of course, has seen the Spurs in the NBA finals once before. At the time, he was a one-man tour de force that single-handedly ripped the heart out of the Eastern Conference en route to the Cleveland Cavaliers' shocking finals appearance in 2007.
Heading into this series, the popular trope has been that LeBron is starring in a nightmarish return to those Cleveland days, with Dwyane Wade playing the role of Larry Hughes and with Chris Bosh standing in for Big Z.
And elsewhere, there are plenty of other storylines that deserve a spotlight. Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich are attempting to win an NBA finals 14 years removed from their first championship together. Tony Parker is continuing to solidify his claim as this generation's most under-appreciated superstar. LeBron himself is battling the historical ladder, all while facing the proposition of going 1-for-4 in NBA Finals appearances.
Apologies for the impending fanboy comment, but all of this is simply awesome. This series will feature two great teams colliding on a national stage, coached by two of the NBA's greatest minds. With Game 1 only hours from getting underway, let's take a quick look at some of the major questions that need answering in this series.
Game 1 Scheduling Information
When: Thursday, June 6 (9 p.m. EST)
Where: AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami
Watch: ABC
Stream: WatchESPN
Series' Burning Questions
We Know LeBron Will Show Up, but what about Wade and Bosh?
It seems almost unfair how unflappably transcendent LeBron James has become over these past 24 months. Against Dallas in the 2011 NBA Finals, picking weaknesses in James' game—the insistence on avoiding the post and playing almost exactly like he did in Cleveland despite different personnel—was relatively easy, albeit nit-picky. Even last year, as he embraced the post and allowed Miami to find its destiny as possibly the best small-ball team ever, James had completely abandoned the three-pointer.
Now? Good luck finding an area of the game in which LeBron does not excel. His evisceration of Paul George down low in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals this year was something of legend, and he's become such an excellent jump-shooter that his numbers didn't atrophy a bit against Indiana in that series—even as many have said Roy Hibbert was "in James' head."
The veracity of that argument matters not. James has too many skills and too many gifts to be taken out of a game, despite understandably being less willing to go to the rim against Hibbert.
But heading into this series, James' excellence has surprisingly taken a backseat. After games and in the lead up to this series, the media scrum has not been about James' reinvention or the countless hours he has put in to make himself something of an NBA Voltron. Instead, nearly the entirety of the focus has been on James' other members of the Big Three—Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh—and how ghastly their performance has been prior to the finals.
First, a caveat: Everyone knows Wade's knee is being held together by Elmer's glue at this point and that Bosh has been battling ankle trouble.
But even with that factored in, the cratering of Wade and Bosh's respective games has been jarring. Here's just a quick statistical breakdown of the duo's failings:
Those drop-offs are marked in nearly every category, and I was even nice and kept the bye-week Bucks series in there to help out a bit. Bosh grabbed 4.3 rebounds over a seven-game series against Indiana. Wade has scored 20 points just twice in these entire playoffs. Both have been so bad that we were congratulating Wade for a 21-point outing in Game 7 against the Pacers, and we were crediting Bosh for staying involved elsewhere despite a 3-of-13 shooting performance in that same game.
In the immortal words of Vince Lombardi: "What the hell's going on out here?"
For Wade, the answer is both rooted in his injuries and basketball mortality as a now-31-year-old. Unlike his superfreak teammate, Wade has never developed a consistent outside jumper. Other than some red-hot spurts from midrange, Wade's game has always consisted of three words: attack, attack, attack.
In fact, while LeBron has gone back to incorporating his three-point game, Wade has abandoned it entirely. He hoisted up just 66 threes in 69 games played in the regular season, and just four thus far in the postseason. That's not a problem for a healthy Wade. He's so great at finding ways to the rim that it's never really mattered that his jump-shooting is still replacement-level, at best, as evidenced by Wade making 52.1 percent of his field goals this year.
What happens when Wade isn't fully healthy is the problem. Wade, when in attack mode, is great for the Heat offense—at least normally. However, the Indiana series showed just how frustrated Wade can get when he's unable to create for himself.
The Heat are going to emphasize getting Wade into the action via a series of screens. They've had a ton of success with a pet set where Wade comes crashing into the middle after a cross-screen, set on this play by Mario Chalmers. The result is a miss here, but that's irrelevant. The process is strong, and Wade finds a cutting James after re-setting and recovering the loose ball:
Wade will probably see a ton of Danny Green in this series, which is a slight relief from seven games of Lance Stephenson. By proxy of that downgrade alone, Wade should get one or two better shots than he did against Indiana. But this isn't the same superstar player we've grown accustomed to, and Miami is going to need to adjust to get Wade more involved in different ways.
Bosh will also benefit from not having to deal with Indiana defensively. David West and Roy Hibbert beat Bosh inside relentlessly, rendering him rudderless for almost the entire series. Bosh has played quite well against San Antonio during "the Big Three era," but one has to wonder what damage the Indiana series has done to him mentally.
LeBron James is the best player on the planet. He can do a lot of things, but he can't shoulder the entire burden. Wade and Bosh need to play the roles they did all regular season, or at least a decent facsimile of them, in order for Miami to have a chance.
How Will "Pop" Vary Up Spurs' Offense vs. Miami's Attacking Defense?
The Spurs, a consistent well-oiled machine of efficiency, aren't having such a crisis of stardom. Their system is not predicated on three monoliths out-talenting the opposition. Tony Parker is obviously one of the 10 best players in basketball and Tim Duncan is Tim Duncan, but San Antonio is a product of its simple, yet brilliant offensive system more than anything else.
The Spurs emphasize spacing, ball movement and smart shots (read: corner three-pointers) more than any other team in the league. And they've also been doing it longer, leading to an innate knowledge of where to be and where to go with the ball at all times. When in a rhythmic flow, there is no more beautiful offense in basketball to watch—Miami included.
Of course, a very high percentage of that offensive flow is predicated on Parker's excellence. As you may have heard a time or two—or 20—the Spurs like running Parker through a series of pick-and-rolls. And what makes Parker special is that he knows when and where to attack.
Synergy Sports' data notes that nearly 29 percent of the Spurs' possessions ending in a field goal attempt, turnover or free-throw attempts have come via a pick-and-roll ball-handler or roll man. Anyone who has watched San Antonio this season knows that a much, much higher percentage of their actions are predicated on the NBA's favorite play.
This creates an interesting matchup against Miami's defense. By nature, the Heat swarm opposing ball-handlers with a near-collegiate-level intensity. They blitz pick-and-roll ball-handlers while keeping their charging big man in a position to impede the pass to the roll man. Few teams have the athletes to pull such a system off. The Heat have them in spades.
Miami, thanks at least in part to that trapping system, forced 21 turnovers in its decisive Game 7 victory over the Pacers. It will be interesting to see how much Miami blitzes hard at Parker and the Spurs offense as a whole in Game 1. During their one regular season matchup with Parker present (and with Wade and LeBron out), the Heat backups were able to do a nice job of disrupting with their aggression.
Obviously, we can't do much with that information. Miami was playing its "C-team," employing players on traps we may never see at all in this series.
Additionally, the Spurs have been a relatively careful team throughout the season. They finished 10th in turnover rate during the regular season and have dropped their rate down to 12.6 percent in the playoffs, a number which would have led the league in the regular season. That represents a stark contrast to Indiana's turnover-happy 18.1 percent rate during the playoffs.
There is hope for the Heat, though. San Antonio's starting lineup, its most-used unit in these playoffs, actually has a relatively poor 16.1 percent turnover rate. Here is a look at how the Spurs' most-used five-man units compare turnover-wise.
That doesn't necessarily mean that San Antonio will continue that rate against Miami. Small sample sizes obviously apply, but it should and likely will mean that the Spurs will look to find different ways to vary their play-calling in order to get Parker the ball in advantageous spots.
Luckily, San Antonio already has some very nice variations installed that could make the Heat's defensive aggression backfire. The simplest one of those, which relies completely on Parker, is when the point guard will "reject" a screen by going against its expected direction. This can be especially effective against the jumpy Norris Cole, as it was here earlier in the season:
Another remix, which San Antonio trotted out plenty against Memphis, has the Spurs big men disguising their screen direction until the very last minute. Tiago Splitter (pictured below) and Boris Diaw are both very good at doing this, and they kept the Grizzlies big men on skates during the Western Conference Finals by taking advantage of their assumptions.
The intelligence of the San Antonio attack should prod some additional variance out of the Heat defense. Erik Spoelstra all but abandoned the trap-heavy scheme against Indiana in Games 5 and 6, instead of having his big men hang right about the three-point stripe. That's still relatively aggressive—the Spurs like to keep their bigs deep and force midrange jumpers—but allowed for quicker close outs on the roll men.
There's certainly a personnel difference between Indiana and San Antonio—and George Hill and Parker especially—but this chess match of adjustments will be one worth keeping an eye on.
Will Either Side Get Any Help From Role Players?
This question may be the one that defines this entire series. For all of the enjoyment we get from talking about this series' stars—and we get plenty—the Big Threes on both sides are separated by the thinnest of margins. James, Wade and Bosh are better players than Duncan, Parker and Manu Ginobili when everyone is healthy.
As we've already noted, that's not the case. It's unclear whether the Heat will get 50, 75 or 100 percent versions of Wade or Bosh, though the wiser bet is probably more on the former side than the latter. That, along with Parker's expert play heading into this series, makes the Big Three battle far closer to a wash than anyone could have imagined. (Note: I'd still take Miami's, simply because of LeBron.)
The small talent gap at the top for these two teams means that secondary players—the future Robert Horrys of the world—may hold the cards for their respective team. Thus far, it's been a tale of two supporting casts for both sides.
After sending a fusillade of corner daggers into the heart of opposing teams throughout the regular season, Miami's shooters have gone shivering cold during the playoffs. As a team, the Heat shot 39.6 percent during the regular season from three-point land, which was the second-best mark in the league. That number is down to a mediocre 35.6 percent for the playoffs.
And what's disconcerting is that most of the decline comes from players whose primary offensive role is to simply hold their X-button whenever they are passed the ball. Here is a look at how each of Miami's five most frequent three-point shooters' playoff numbers compare to their regular season totals:
First thought: Is there anything LeBron James can't excel at? Second thought: Holy goodness gracious, what happened to Miami's shooters? Ray Allen picked it up in Game 7 against Indiana and Mike Miller showed some signs of life in that series as well, but Shane Battier has been unusable.
Battier became such a fringe member of the rotation that he was the only active Heat player to not get burn in Game 7. Yikes. That's especially scary considering that Miami built a ton of its small-ball reputation on Battier taking one for the team and guarding power forwards. Spoelstra will need Battier to return to form quickly, or else LeBron is going to be stuck guarding a big man far more often than Miami would like.
The Spurs haven't had as many problems with their bench. Gary Neal is struggling from the field and Ginobili is a glorified backup point guard. Overall, though, things have held to form. The big question for San Antonio won't be past performance, but it will be about whether they will be able to handle their tasks at hand in this series.
Much of the focus will be on Kawhi Leonard. The ascending young forward is the only player on San Antonio's roster who can even remotely match up with LeBron's size and athleticism, and Leonard will get that assignment for the bulk of the series. Gregg Popovich certainly won't leave Leonard alone on an island, but Leonard will be expected to handle LeBron, one-on-one, for the most part—or at least until proven unable to do so.
How much guarding LeBron takes Leonard out of the Spurs' offensive game plan is something worth watching. Leonard has become a vital cog in San Antonio's attack, knocking down corner threes and being one of the team's only aggressive offensive rebounders.
The same can be said for Danny Green, who will probably spell Leonard as LeBron's secondary defender. With Wade, even at a diminished state, needing attending to as well, Green's job won't be easy at any time during this series, and neither will Leonard's.
And that's what has to scare Popovich heading into this series; if Miami's defense only has to worry about San Antonio's Big Three, this series is over. Green, Leonard, Matt Bonner and the rest of the lot have to knock down open shots provided by the Spurs' ball movement via Parker in order for this offense to subsist.
San Antonio has struggled against similarly athletic teams in the past, and the two-way toll on Green and Leonard could weigh heavily as this series progresses. We don't know whether it will or not, but that might be the singular question that answers the riddle of which team will hoist the Larry O'Brien trophy later this month.
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