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

More What Ifs…

What If Bosh had defended Nowitzki more? Bosh held his own against Nowitzki at times, while Miami threw too much Udonis Haslem at Nowitzki.

This wasn’t the 2006 version of Haslem. This version of Halsem had torn a tendon in his foot, missing basically the whole 2011 season. He fought through it as Halsem always does but just couldn’t keep up with Nowitzki.

My Biggest what If is this. Why didn’t LeBron guard Nowitzki in crunch time?

Now I know that James struggled during that finals but as the saying goes, “great defense leads to great offense”. What I mean by that is that because James struggled offensively, he should have focused his energy on to Nowitzki, which would have then led to offensive success and/or rhythm.

I wish Erik Spoelstra looked into that more at that time. The most famous what if is if James would have averaged more than 2.2 points in the fourth quarter, where in previous rounds he averaged 7.6pts in the fourth.

My assessment of why James struggled leads me to believe that it was because he was too indecisive, overthinking the game. Wade and he also did too much your turn my turn there as well in that game.

Looking back at LeBron’s psyche there, he was probably just overthinking everything because the media acted like he had committed a crime, when in reality, he had just moved from Cleveland to Miami to play ball.

Looking back at that series was honestly really hard to watch me though, as it brought out that freshman in high school again. I remember having the same feelings back then as I do now when watching that series.

I’ll take this to my grave. Miami should have won that series in five, but all the credit to Dallas for striking while the iron was hot.