Well then.
What do you take from a blowout like this, a game that got so out of hand that TNT switched away from the broadcast for most of the fourth quarter to show the first quarter of Portland-Phoenix on NBATV (which I'd never before seen in an NBA context)?
Mostly, I want to caution against over-confidence. Not to the team, necessarily, because they don't read me, but more to the fans. And not because the fans affect the outcome of the game, but because fans can be a little volatile this time of year, and because there are still a lot of games left in this series, and Miami isn't likely to look as bad as they did Tuesday night when they get home to South Beach. Game 2 was end-to-end domination from the second quarter on, the best we've played on both ends of the floor in quite a while, but while it was a 2008 era performance, let's wait a little while before we, as fans, re-assert ourselves as true contenders for the championship.
So what do I expect in Game 3 (Friday, 7 p.m. Eastern, ESPN)? Well, for starters, I expect Miami to go to the line a bit more (they shot 16 free throws to our 27 on Tuesday. I actually only really caught the third quarter of Game 2, so I can't really speak to whether we were getting legitimate calls and were just being more aggressive than the Heat, or if the officials were calling things our way. I can say, however, that free throw disparities do not often go unnoticed in NBA circles, so I'd expect Dwyane Wade and company to get to the charity stripe with a bit more frequency.
I don't expect Boston to go on a 44-8 -- yeah, you read that right -- run like they did Tuesday, either, although extended droughts for Miami against Boston are becoming something of a pattern (recall that they scored just 15 points in the final 19 minutes of Game 1). I don't have any more of an explanation for it than I did yesterday. I am bewildered that a team with Wade can go without scoring for as long as Miami has during some of these stretches; at some point, he's gotta just put his head down and bull his way toward the basket. (Not that I'm criticizing Wade; he's the only guy on their team who did anything yesterday.)
Anyway, the bottom line is that there's a lot to be happy about, but there's also plenty of work to be done -- and plenty to prove before I'm ready to say we have a shot at this thing.
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