Miami Heat: The 2011 version is the finals that keeps Heat fans awake at night

More Flash Please?!

In today’s NBA, teams expose weaknesses like that all the time and I wish Miami would have gone at him more. Especially when thinking about how much Nowitzki scored it that series, it would have made him spend more energy on the defensive side, potentially taking away from his offense.

Wade was really good during that series. He got to the basket at will and at times, I wish that the Miami Heat would have let him have the ball in his hands more and especially in game two, where Miami blew an 88-73 lead with 6:40 left in the game.

At this point Wade had 36 points and was taking control of the game but for some reason, they started to go your turn my turn, with James having the ball in his hands more if you really look at it. Everything went downhill from there and Miami lost the game.

Looking back, they lost the series that game. I don’t care how good your team is, you can not give up games let alone NBA Finals games and that is just what they did there.

Now, this is a big what if but in thinking about the fact that Miami won game three in Dallas, it leads you here. Could you imagine if Miami had won games two and three? Miami would have been up 3-0 going into game four.

Unfortunately, the Miami defense was never as consistent as they needed to sustained periods across the entire Finals. For some reason, Miami elected to leave Jason Kidd open from three. Kidd, who ranks 10th all-time ever in the NBA from three and although by volume, was left open most of the time.

In real-time, I didn’t get why Miami was leaving him open. Another critique is that when Kidd was running a pick and roll, Miami would double him, which did not make sense.

Kidd has always looked to pass first, not score and even in knowing this, the Miami Heat just let him pick apart their defense with his playmaking. Also, I kind of forgot that Chris Bosh‘s jumper wasn’t going down for him that series.

Bosh had a lot of good looks but was missed quite a few point-blank jumpers. At times, you could see Bosh becoming indecisive on whether to shoot it or not, which ultimately lead to turnovers.

Having said that, Bosh had Nowitzki guarding him at times, where Bosh took him to the hole a couple of those times. You would have liked to have seen Bosh do that more, as I said, to make Nowitzki work hard at both ends.

Here’s a sentence dedicated to another Miami Heat nuisance. Jason Terry was as annoying as ever back in the 2011 Finals, hitting huge threes and just finding other ways to get under our skin.