It's been over for days now but I have to say that I had really hoped for more out of that NBA final championship than we got out of it. The Miami Heat were underdogs the entire tournament and defied all the odds and as far as I know were never favored in any of the games they played once they made it into the brackets. This started when they had to play the Bucks in round one and the Bucks were kind of favorites to win the entire thing.
The Heat proved everyone wrong though and they did it time and time again and for me and many other fans this was one of the most exciting aspects of the entire tournament.
src
I've always enjoyed rooting for the underdogs and absolutely love Cinderella stories in any tournament. Therefore, I was rooting for the Heat once they dispatched Milwaukee in what appeared to be a rather effortless fashion.
I think one of the worst aspects of the Miami Heat though was that a lot of their offense kind of depended on whether or not Jimmy Butler was "in the zone" or not. During most of the tournament he seemed to consistently be doing exactly that, but why he fizzled against the Nuggets is anyone's guess. When they defeated Denver at home (the first time that anyone had ever beaten them at home in the entire tournament) I thought we were going to be in for something truly amazing in the Finals. That all got shut down in the following 3 games though as the Nuggets went on to win the next 3 games in almost identical fashion.
src
So why is it that Miami was completely unable to pull off the magic that they had been accessing throughout the entire tournament up to that point? I suppose that is anyone's guess by I think the lazy answer is that they didn't have answer for Nikola Jokic and let's be honest here, I don't think anyone else on any other team does either. That dude is just unstoppable.
src
When you have a 6'11" center who can create space but is much my spry than the average 7 footer, but he can also rain down 3-pointers with relative accuracy, what sort of defense do you use against that? He also isn't a greedy center and is more than happy to pass the rock to an open man rather than go for all the glory himself. It's a really big deal when someone gets a triple-double in a single game but Jokic is so good that his AVERAGE is only .2 assists away from AVERAGING a triple-double. To make matters worse for his opponents, you can't even sacrifice bench players for intentional fouls because he has an 83% free throw rate.
Honestly, what could the Heat possibly do against this guy?
The Heat were a fun team to watch because a lot of their roster are guys that weren't even drafted, let alone expected to rise to the levels that they did. I guess you could say that I was just really disappointed that Miami wasn't able to make more of a game of it in the finals because except for that one victory they had, which later seemed like a fluke (and probably was,) the Heat didn't really look like the belonged in the Finals. In many ways I kind of would have liked to have seen how the Celitcs could have fared, but hey! That's just the way it works in the NBA some years right?
I guess I just miss the nail-biters that go 3-3 and come down to the final seconds of the final game. There's always next year I guess and since the NBA season is absurdly long (too long IMO,) we aren't going to have to wait very long to get to see more of it.