I think like many people I basically took a break from watching the Heat for this first round of playoffs. There were too many other good games, with too many other good teams. And when I did tune in to watch them play the Bobcats, I was watching Al Jefferson and Kemba Walker. Even the Heat didn't seem that interested. So it's nice to come back and see them play. It's like I was opening a favorite box of cigars and taking another out. I got another chance to savor everything I remembered liking.
Miami is looking good--and I do want to emphasize just their look alone. They still have the look of a championship team. It may be a trick of the eye, but there are times at which a certain level of efficiency, of singleness of purpose, just seems to radiate out from the movement of a team on the court, from the energy the individual players bring, from the way they interact with the crowd--all of it. After each possession you are left not just with the sense that the play was executed correctly, but also satisfactorily--as if there were some kind of higher standard to which everyone was operating and which no one needed to talk about. You can see glimpses of it in the Clippers when they are at their very best; Oklahoma City lacks it; San Antonio blinds one with it. But the Heat thoroughly look it, though it may not be as impressive as it was last year, say.
What was immediately so impressive in this game was the ability of Miami to split a defense in the interior. The passing on the inside is so smart; players are so in tune with one another. The more and more this happens the more and more I don't see Brooklyn having anything that can contend with it. In the second quarter Chris Bosh faked dribbling to the hoop and dished a pass to LeBron--cutting to the hoop at the exact right moment--with such grace and ease, you were left thinking these two must know every single tendency of the other, how they like their coffee, what drinks they enjoy, all sorts of intimate things even friends don't quite know about each other. Brooklyn looks too slow and too syrupy to contend with this: not in the sense that they are unable to defend in general, but just that they are unable to muster the type of awareness required to stop such movement and passing as this. The Heat play in the paint and pass to each other there like other teams play in the halfcourt. It's an immense space for them. And this should terrify Brooklyn.
They are also still too good at fast breaks, but helpfully Brooklyn looks like they are moving the ball so wisely, so methodically, that this isn't even an issue: steals or deflections leading to thunderous LeBron-Wade fast breaks are going to only appear in this series sporadically if Brooklyn keeps up what they are currently doing. The opportunities are simply not there. I saw Brooklyn play one pick and roll in the first half. One: in today's NBA, that's just amazing. And of course the Heat simply did Heat-things with it: LeBron blitzed it, pushing out to the halfcourt and trapping, not caring about the roll-man, and this forced a weird bouncepass out and an attempt to swing the ball to the wing which simply got thrown out of bounds. (This, by the way, is how effective the Heat's blitzing of the pick-and-roll is: it messes up the opposing team's offense so wholly, that even when the pass to the open man is there the offense is so rattled they can't complete it.) Brooklyn, however, only made this mistake once, and you know that all the skill one saw unbottled in their work with that play will simply have to go to waste until they meet up with a team that doesn't move the ball so patiently.
As for that offense of Brooklyn, it seemed highly effective, if a little plodding. There was a lot of using up the clock, lots of finding Joe Johnson with about four seconds to go for threes. There are a couple looks in the paint that were just missed. Paul Pierce continues to impress as a clutch spot-up jump shooter. Deron Williams continues to look more like a shooting guard than a point guard--his two amazing shots to close the second and third quarters, only sort of reaffirm this. The bench isn't looking too good, however: they look like they can play fast in transition, but the gameplan doesn't allow for much of that. Kidd might somehow figure out a way to make that more effective in the further games, since as a unit they aren't looking like they have much offensive power otherwise.
Miami just has too many resources, however, for this to look promising for Brooklyn. Every Miami player has a special aura about them, a glow, as if each shot, each move, each play, were the fated culmination of some really involved personal backstory of triumph and hardship. Every shot by Ray Allen is like this. You know what is going to happen, and more importantly why it is going to happen. Each shot seems to be absolutely destined to go in the basket, and every shot by his teammates seems like it had to occur in precisely that way. Contrast this to how KG looks when he works, which is dead, except for five minutes or so of absolute brilliance and his amazing off-court coaching: things seem so much more uphill for Brooklyn. The only thing that resembles this atmosphere on the Heat is Wade's game, which still looks a little shaky, despite the fact he drove to the basket and made shots off the glass someone ten years younger and healthier couldn't dream of making.
The most wonderful thing about this game however is simply that LeBron is looking pumped, and is playing post a lot on Livingston, and really seems to like it. He's been looking like he is just enjoying his physical prowess more and more. Before this seemed to be dedicated to some goal--to beating KD to the MVP trophy: now he seems simply to be learning how to enjoy it to the full. It is going to be a sweet, sweet series to watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment