Dallas beat houston in game 7 using their quickness and speed on their way to a 40pt win. Miami has a lot of old vets who are slow and not necessarily fast or quick. why then did Miami do a better job of not letting dallas run and gun. We had a lot of veterans on our team in fact one of the oldest and im sure Miami was one of the oldest. makes me wonder
Their primary ball handler forced the action inside, while ours settled for jumpers. not the only reason, but a big reason nonetheless.
Bingo. There is no comparison between Rox and Heat. Rox don't have a guy like Wade who can take inside and go to the line that much. T-Mac is a jump shooter, even he is healthy. 80% of his shots are jumpers. To slow the game down, you will have to have a guy who can consistently get the call, go the line and disrupt opponent’s rhythms. T-Mac is not close, especially after his back is hurt. I don't even bother to mention Yao. Most of time Refs treat him like Dumpier or Diop. Rox fans should thank the refs already If he could avoid foul trouble for even one series,
What on Earth makes you think Dallas beat us with speed and quickness? Was Dallas not quick in the 3 games they lost to us? Perhaps Dallas won because they made shots and we didn't. The teams weren't suddenly fundamentally different in game 7 than in Games 1-6. Blowouts happen when teams get on a roll. In this series, Miami and Dallas each blew each other out once. Bottom line: it was one game. Their guys played well. Ours did not.
Because they did. They went smaller after the first 2 games. In a nutshell, yes. But games 1-2 vs. Games 3-7 weren't based on just the Mavs beginning to make shots that they didn't before. Dallas switched to a smaller lineup and killed us with dribble penetration (i.e quickness).
Udonis Haslem, antoine walker. they made all the difference last night. plus, dallas choked, taking quick shots. stackhouse reverted back to old form, taking ill-advised off-balance shots.
Actually, I thought Stackhouse was the only guy on that team that actually stepped his game up in the 4th quarter. Dirk didn't have a FG, Terry missed a ton of good looks, Josh Howard was MIA (probably afraid he was going to call a timeout), Harris is too young, Marquis didn't get enough consistent playing time to know what he was doing, and Dampier is just a stiff. Miami played well... but Dallas absolutely choked away games 3, 5, and last night... just played horribly.
But we won game 6, and had leads in games 3 and 4 with something like 2 minutes to go. It's not like that speed totally dominated us. We just didn't make shots at the end of those games, or it would have been a 4 game sweep for us. Similarly, if Wade doesn't make crazy shots at the end of the last few games, Dallas wins and everyone says Miami couldn't stop Dallas' speed.
The game three's were very similar in the two series, in that the series turned around. Didn't Dallas go on huge runs in both games (3 and 4) to eek out victories?
NO NO NO! The reason the Heat succeeded and we failed was because we played ZERO DEFENSE and the other players were complete spectators to Tracy and Yao. It was like our role players were either completely out of gas and had nothing left in the tank (which was certainly true of Sura and Wesley). The team also did not seem to be well-prepared mentally. The Rockets acted as if game 6 of that series was game 7. I'm not saying Tracy is equal to Wade but let's be real. Jumpers vs forcing action inside WAS NOT a big reason for the different result. The current Heat roster is just way better than our shorthanded/injured/creaky playoff roster last year.
And, as you said before, they missed the wide open shots against Miami that they made against us. But, Miami did have more overall athleticism, and skill, on defense... we had Ryan Bowen and Scott Padgett chasing Dirk around, while they had Udonis Haslem and James Posey. We had gimpy Sura, Jon Barry, and Mike James trying to stay with JT/Howard/etc... they had Jason Williams, Dwayne Wade, Gary Payton. The only thing we outmatched them on (athleticism wise, and defensively) was T-Mac vs. Antoine Walker. Shaq and Yao are about even. Going into next year, we need more depth at the PG, SG, and SF positions... which is exactly what is being targeted for the draft/FA.
Miami is a little deeper than the Rockets team that lost to the Mavs, but other than dept they are two similar teams. I think you have to look at the coaching adjustments made by Riley. He went small to match up better with Dallas and put Zo in there to give them shot blocking. JVG lost the series for us because he stubbornly kept collapsing on the penetrators and left the perimeter wide open and Jason Terry killed us with his shooting. Yes you have to give Wade his dues because he kept taking it to the basket and they couldn't stop his drives. T-Mac is capable of getting to the goal but he settled for outside shots to much in our series with the Mavs.
Our center is better. I like a healthy Tmac over wade. Other than these two, we are not even close comparing to Miami. They've got experience, shooting, defense and leadership in their role players. We are miles behind.
That was the most disappointing thing about last year. As much as Howard gets maligned, I would like to have seen how far we could have gone with him healthy. That team last year was on one of those rolls - blowing good teams out left and right over the last month of the season or so. And with chemistry so fickle and the players so old, there was no telling if we could repeat that team again.
The main difference is the coaching. Riley mixed up his defense with zones and man and had different wrinkles to confuse Dallas. We couldn't keep up with Dallas with our simple man defense and that quickly led to our demise. Look at the scoring as the series went along. Dallas couldn't score on the Heat after game 3 and the score just kept rising when we played them. Memo to JVG, get in the film room and pick up some new tricks, zone defense is the only way this team can keep up with Dallas, SA, and Phoenix.
IMO, from watching Riley and JVG all these years, obviously there are many similarities in their coaching style. However, one huge and important difference is Riley is such a master motivator. He also truly inspires his guys (15 strong) to play above and beyond their abilities. He creates a "us against the world" mentality. I don't know if the same can be said about JVG. In regards to the Rockets loss to the Mavs last year, if we had Udonis Haslem cleaning up the boards and hitting shorts jumpers instead of Ryan Bowen...the Rockets would have taken the series in 6.
Very frustrating. I don't know if it took that long for Howard to get into shape, but he was playing well before he went down. If we had him, I think we beat Dallas. It was really a bummer.
