NBA Eastern Conference Semi Finals Preview: HEAT vs Celtics

By Eric Yearian

One team swept through the first round dispatching an opponent who was battling injuries, while the other was eating breakfast or something, I don’t know, ask LeBron James. The Celtics drew a Knicks team that came into the series looking to overwhelm Boston with their trio of Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire, and Chauncey Billups.  By the end though, Billups couldn’t even suit up and Stoudemire lost his explosiveness as well as his effectiveness to a back injury. That left only Anthony for the Celtics to focus on and Boston is probably the best team since the Bad Boy Pistons when it comes to rendering a single player ineffective. Anthony got his numbers in the series, but he rarely looked comfortable against them and wasn’t very efficient. The Celtics got back to playing Celtic basketball, too. Rajon RondoThey kind of backed into the playoffs this year as point guard Rajon Rondo had been unable to sustain his stellar play from earlier in the year. Once the playoffs started, it was a different story though. Four games later, they’re moving on to face off against the Miami HEAT.

While the Celtics were making light work of New York, the HEAT was taking care of business against Philadelphia. The HEAT knocked out the 76ers in 5 games, and prior to game five, LeBron compared it to “just finishing our breakfast.” Beating a playoff team 4 out of 5 games is nothing to sneeze at, but the way Miami did it has to be alarming to coach Erik Spoelstra. The 76ers drew blood first in most of the games, sprinting out to substantial leads in the first quarter of most games. Luckily for Miami, they had so much talent in the form of their big three that they were able to overcome the early deficits. Once they had stormed back to take the lead, they had difficulty holding off late surges by Philadelphia in the final frame of a few games. Philadelphia was able to close the gap late and make games more competitive than they should have been, but in the end, Miami did enough to win in 5 games.

In this series, if Miami gets off to slow starts, it won’t be a mere inconvenience like it was in the first round because Boston has plenty of talent itself, including four all-stars to Miami’s three. The popular thing to say is that Boston has a good history against LeBron James, especially after last season, but James has averaged over 26 points, 9 Assists, and 7.7 rebounds per game against them in the playoffs, and that was when he didn’t have the help of Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Wade boasts a per game average of 33.2 points and 6.8 assists per game against Boston in the playoffs  so they’ve each found a measure of success against Boston in the past, even though Boston has a winning record against each in those games. Boston is a great defensive team, and they are at their best when they can focus on one player, but in this series, even if they do that that will leave two all-stars free to operate.
Lebron James
Key for the HEAT: In most situations, I would think it would be important to get contributions from the role players in order to win, but Boston is a unique monster. Boston wants to lure you into utilizing the role players, assuming that one star player can’t beat them by himself (see the playoff averages of Wade and James above). However, the HEAT is a unique team itself, featuring three star players, meaning even Boston can’t lock them all down at once. However, the HEAT has to have all three of its stars playing well at the same time to have a shot at beating Boston 4 out of 7 games. If they can get James, Wade, and Bosh firing on all cylinders at the same time, I like their chances in this series.

Key for the Celtics: The key for the Celtics, in my mind, is pretty simple, it’s Rajon Rondo. It’s the one thing Boston has that Miami can’t counter. Boston has Ray Allen, Miami counters with Dwyane Wade. Celtics have Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett at the forward spots, Miami had James and Bosh. Celtics have broken down centers Shaq and [player: Jermaine O’Neal], Miami has Eric Dampier and Joel Anthony. There is no match for Rajon Rondo, though. Nobody on Miami’s roster can match his quickness and he is such a craft playmaker that once he gets in the paint defenses might as well wave a white flag. His weakness is, as everybody knows, the fact that he absolutely, positively cannot make a jumpshot consistently to save his life; if he could he’d probably be the best point guard in a league full of premier point guards. If he can play the way he did in the first round series, or in the early parts of the season, Miami will be helpless to stop him and Boston will move on to the conference finals.

X-Factors: Chris Bosh’s attitude has to be Miami’s X-factor. Everybody knows that Garnett, at some point, will try to punk him and get in his mind. Garnett is better at it than anybody in the league, and although he’s gotten trashed in the media for it a little bit this year, he’s not going to quit, because it works well for him. KG will try to get in the head of Miami’s trio, especially a guy that the soft spoken Kevin Durant described as a fake tough guy. It will be up to Bosh to stand toe to toe with KG and not back down, because if he backs down, it’s all but over for the Heatles.
   
The obvious answer is Shaq, but to be honest, I have no faith in him at this point in his career, so Jeff Green is the next most obvious candidate to have a big impact on this series after the big four. Green’s play, to put it kindly, has been uninspiring since being traded from the Thunder. He has a diverse skill set, and can create some matchup problems for the HEAT. Green has an inside/outside game that would be very difficult for any HEAT defenders not named Bosh or James to stop, and since they’ll be busy with Pierce and KG it could be a perfect situation for Green to step up and make an impact for his new team.

The Prediction: I’m going to go with the HEAT winning this series in 7 games. I’m not picking the HEAT because I think they’re the better team, because I don’t, I feel like Boston is the superior team at this point and has more weapons. However, this Boston team reminds me of the 2007 Pistons team, they play excellent defense, and have a good (although unspectacular) offense with a lot of different options. I thought the Pistons would win it all that season, and when they matched up against LeBron’s Cavaliers, well game 5 happened and made me think twice about ever counting out a team featuring James. I have a rule for when I can’t decide between two teams: I take the three best players in the game (in this case James, Wade, and Rondo) and whatever team employs two of them is who I pick, so I see James and Wade putting the HEAT on their shoulders in game 7 and winning this series over a more talented Celtics squad.
 
Schedule:
Sunday, May 1st: Celtics at HEAT 3:30 Eastern
Tuesday, May 3rd: Celtics at HEAT TBD
Saturday, May 7th: HEAT at Celtics 8:00 Eastern
Monday, May 9th: HEAT at Celtics TBD
Wednesday, May 11th: Celtics at HEAT TBD (If Necessary)