The road to the Championship for the Miami Heat will not be through defense

It’s time to face facts, the Miami Heat has been playing lately like they did during the season and while it may have served them well during that time, but this is no longer the regular season.  The difference between regular season games and the playoffs is the players, coaches and staff needs to up their game.  The last five games against the Dallas Mavericks have made that abundantly clear.  Dallas has raised theirs but Miami hasn’t.  As a strong Miami Heat fan, it pains me to say this but maybe Rome was not built in a day and the Miami Heat needs to go all the way only to lose this series.  It is my wish that they win the final two games in Miami but last night made me see some things I had never seen before.  I am by no means an expert in the field of basketball but I am also not blind.

The Heat lost Game 4 not because of them not having heart or wanting that game as much as the Mavericks but because of two simple things.  The first was not being able to recognize that while Dwyane Wade was in the locker room, LeBron James and the Heat team on the floor was holding their own quite well.  The reason behind that was Dallas began to breathe easier thinking that all they had to do was control LeBron and because of that, LeBron was able to penetrate and pass the ball to the open shooter with uncanny accuracy.  Those shots were beginning to fall all over the court for the Heat and you could begin to hear the air leaving the arena.  When Wade stepped back on the court, the production went down mainly because the players now had to adapt. 

The second and final thing that did not ring any bells was the fact that Chris Bosh seemed to have lost his focus on the floor and made some unconventional turnovers because he took his eye off the ball.  He refused to body up and Dirk Nowitzki was happier than a shop-a-holic with a gold card to have Bosh defending him.  I believe that in order for the Miami Heat to win this series they are going to have to do things a little differently than they did in the regular season. 

The Miami Heat coaches should seriously consider replacing Bosh in the fourth quarter and leaving both Joel Anthony and Adonis Haslem in there during this time.  They may want to think about benching Bibby and replacing him with Chalmers to start or Bibby’s brother-in-law.  They may want to think about Eric Dampier or “The Big Z” to shake things up a bit and they seriously need to design a group of players around LeBron James and Dwyane Wade separately so that both do not have to be on the floor together except during the fourth quarter.  Start the game with both get a double digit lead then pull one for an extended period before replacing him with the other.  When they fall behind or seem to have lost their way, do not call a time out and let them learn how to play through it.  What made Phil Jackson one of the best NBA coaches of all time was his willingness to let his players play through a tough run, it is also what made his teams quite formidable because no matter what you threw at them, they seemed to flinch but not stagger.  The Dallas Mavericks hit Miami with a combination of punches in Game 4 and it looked like to me, the team staggered out the arena after it was over.

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