NBA Playoffs 2011: 5 Reasons Miami Heat Will Lose to the Boston Celtics Quickly
Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and the Miami Heat will take on Paul Pierce, Rajon Rondo and the Boston Celtics in a highly anticipated semifinal matchup that many people think will be hotly contested and destined for seven games.
However, as I take a closer look at the series, I do not see it going past six games, if the Miami Heat are lucky.
These are the top five reasons the Boston Celtics will beat the Miami Heat in five games or less.
5. Experience
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This one is simple.
The Celtics have been there. Done that.
The Heat have not. LeBron has never found a way to beat Boston, and Boston has always had his number.
However, often experience is just another word for a team that is old and broken down.
But this team is far from broken down. This team is not like the Spurs who are getting embarrassed by the eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies.
Boston just dealt with a younger New York Knicks team who could not get a single win. So if you are thinking Miami would win because of fresher, younger legs, think again.
Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett are the original Big Three. In fact, it is now the Big Four with Rajon Rondo becoming a premiere point guard in the NBA.
It was their experience that got them to the Finals last year. It will be what at least gets them to the Eastern Conference Finals this year (if not the Finals).
4. Dwyane Wade
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Dwyane Wade has shot the ball poorly against Boston this year. He is shooting slightly over 28 percent in four games against the defending Eastern Conference champs and has made only two three-point shots in 11 attempts.
Wade shoots above 50 percent in Heat wins and 42 percent in losses, so one can only imagine what his 28 percent has done to this team against Boston.
Looking at the numbers it is clear; Boston knows LeBron James cannot beat them by himself. He has played well against Boston, shooting just under 50 percent (40-for-82) and averaging just over 28 points per game.
However, the play of Wade has really cost this Miami team. Boston just has his number. The combination of Ray Allen and Paul Pierce defending Wade has been too much for him to handle.
3. Boston's Perimeter Defense
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The Celtics just play suffocating defense against Miami.
Miami shot 28 percent as a team from three-point land against Boston. That is lower than their team percentage in all their losses combined. Boston seems to contest every shot, has excellent hustle on defense and knows defense is more than just one person playing great man-to-man defense.
Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo play some of the best clutch defense in recent NBA history. There absolutely no reason to believe this team will some how forget how to play defense.
Defense is something that never goes cold. This team has the defensive fundamentals down. It will not be something that will go away in a seven-game series.
Their sometime streaky offense is covered up by their defensive effort, and it allows them to keep games in the event their offense does not produce.
2. Doc Rivers
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Doc Rivers deserves so much more credit for coaching this Celtics team and getting them to play the style of basketball that they do. When they play, it looks like a well-oiled machine.
They have all the fundamentals down. They play smart and they hustle. You rarely see them beat themselves.
They make great adjustments at the half, and Doc Rivers knows how to play to his teams strengths and attack the other team's weaknesses. In a playoff series format, I'll take Doc Rivers' game-planning abilities over Erik Spoelstra any day of the week.
You need to have a great coach to beat a great team. In the playoffs, any NBA coach can coach good enough to win one game, maybe two, against Boston, given the players Spoelstra has at his disposal.
But game in and game out, you see the same team. You have to make adjustments to the other coaches adjustments. Rivers has shown he can do that with the best of them.
Spoelstra? Not so much.
We saw just how Rivers out coached Mike D'Antoni in the first round against New York. The Knicks struggled to make any adjustments to win. Every time New York made a run, Boston seemed to find a way to weather the storm and make the necessary adjustments to stop the run and immediately gain momentum back.
1. Rajon Rondo
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Rajon Rondo is the ultimate wild card in this series because Miami has no legitimate starting point guard.
Mike Bibby has only shown that he is old and ready to retire. He is shooting 21 percent from the field and is scoring just over three points per game in just about 20 minutes per game in the playoffs. This was against rookie Jrue Holliday and the Sixers.
What will he do against Rajon Rondo? Nothing. Again. Rondo is just too quick and will run him out of the building.
No, I did not forget about Mario Chalmers (even though many defenses do forget about him, for good reason). He is their starting point guard and he averaged just over seven points a game and has had a hard time against any team with a point guard worth anything. He is nothing more than a serviceable backup point guard in the NBA. If he is your starter, you have problems.
Spoelstra has been forced to play LeBron James and Dwyane Wade at the point for good amounts of time during games.
While they have the ability to play the point because they are just that talented, that is not their natural position and Spoelstra knows that he is wasting their potential impact on the game by doing that. Wade needs to play shooting guard and James needs to play small forward. That is their bread and butter.
Rondo's ability to drive to the basket is the difference maker. He is a playmaker. He makes that offense run. No one on Miami can stop him. Wade and LeBron will be worried too much about Allen and Pierce to guard Rondo.
