NBA Playoffs 2013: Miami Heat Were Impressive Last Night
Nobody was going to beat the Miami Heat last night. Not when a guy like Udonis Haslem was making shots from the baseline. Not when Haslem scores 17 points on 8-9 shooting. 8-9 of from the field for UDONIS HASLEM. Let that sentence just sink in, and let the fact that I’ve not even talked about Lebron James first sink in. The Heat were just a force of nature last night as they went for 70 points in the first half. I thought they were going to get that in the second half as well with the way things were going. Lebron James did his work down low as he took Paul George to the post every time. That’s something the Indiana Pacers will have to figure out, if they want to double James when it comes to that. If that happens, that leaves a guy open, and if the Heat make shots like they did last night, game four could get just as ugly.
Bright spots for the Indiana Pacers were David West and Roy Hibbert. Once again, the duo inside did some work. Hibbert continues to clean up boards and score points. He missed a couple of easy ones there, but that didn’t matter much when as the game was decided early on. For me, once Dwayne Wade broke out on a dunk, and put the Heat up 17, I knew that this was a wash. The Pacers just looked slow and out of sync the whole game. This could have been one of those types that fed into their own confidence, and pushed too much to get their game going.
Dwayne Wade definitely looked like himself as he was attacking the rim. He gets 18 points as all the Heat starters got double figures. Chris Bosh hits two three pointers. Mario Chalmers hit for 14 points. Lebron James leads the way with 22 points. Chris Anderson once again hit everything. He was cleaning up the lane for the Heat. The Pacers have got to keep him from scoring off the bench as well.
The Pacers will have plenty of film to watch today, and figure out why things went south so quickly last night. They looked a step off once the Heat got the double figure lead. This Pacers team isn’t built to come back from those deficits, so they have to control the tempo in game four, and get this series all even. This was the first game the Heat looked like the Heat that had won so many games in a row, and really looked unstoppable over the last couple of months of the season. You knew they had a game like this in them, now the Pacers will have to answer the challenge come Tuesday. This thing could end up even if the Pacers get right back to what was working in game one and game two. But if there was a game to decide a series, last night could have been it.