This article from Bleacher Report does a pretty good job of showing how the officiating has helped Miami in their series with Oklahoma City. If anything, I think the article understates Miami's advantage -- looking at overall numbers, as that article does, means that you don't get a sense of how Miami has gotten every key call in late-game situations.
As I feared, OKC seems to have given up after the bad officiating in Games 2 and 3. To win, they needed to play as a team and incorporate all of their guys. That's how they scored so many points against San Antonio. But last night they looked like the team in "Hoosiers" when they stopped running Gene Hackman's pass-first offense. They blew out to a 33-16 lead, but lost almost all of that lead in a four-minute stretch at the beginning of the second quarter (once Miami started playing defense). After that, I don't think anyone outside of kids in Oklahoma City under the age of 12 really thought the Thunder were likely to win. Miami rolled to their third victory in a row, 104-98. Over the last three quarters, the Heat outscored OKC 85-65.
The Heat should wrap this thing up on Thursday, and I'm glad. I don't want to watch this series any more.
In other NBA news, the Association is apparently thinking that after 2012, it may no longer send its best players to the Olympics. Between that story and the officiating in the finals, I'll be glad to have the NBA back off of my radar screen pretty soon.
it's so disappointing, given that i was about to get excited about seeing Darius Miller in the pros.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it really is disappointing.
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