Conceptual Architecture

By Noam Schiller

More than anything, this is a matchup of Up vs. Down, of Prologue vs. Epilogue.

The Indiana Pacers technically introduced themselves to the public eye during last year’s hard fought series against Chicago. Technically. But last year has no bearing on what the Pacers are going to do, either now or in the future. Last year was the initial kick from behind, the empirical evidence that maybe this can be part of the core group of something remotely meaningful. Last year was about Roy Hibbert standing his own and Paul George sinking his teeth into this “perimeter defense” thing to see if he can handle it without vomiting.

This year? This is the real deal. No more Josh McRoberts being counted on (and failing) to not commit horrible crunch time turnovers, no more Darren Collison ankle injuries being the difference between a workable backcourt and a barren wasteland. Unlike last year, when anything we got from this team was gravy, this time around we need to see something, even if we’re not sure exactly what that is. No, they won’t win the title, not remotely, but if Danny Granger can’t be the consistent first option, if Collison and George Hill can’t create for others, if Roy Hibbert can’t maintain a solid level of play without peaks and valleys, then this is where we find out. Internal development is still in the cards for this team by the spade, and this team is probably still a year or two away from taking that Thunder-esque carefree upstart and saddling it with the burden of expectations, but if we’re further away than we thought, if we’re just wasting out time here, we need to know to act accordingly.

For the Magic? Whatever this used to be, we’re very close to the end of it. Dwight is gone for the year, may or may not return, may or may not remain a petulant child. The second best player on the team is a restricted free agent, a borderline all-star contributor in a market lacking of actual all-stars, which typically warrants a flashing neon sign yelling “WARNING: WILL BE OVERPAID THIS SUMMER”. Jameer Nelson, longtime emotional leader and underachiever, will opt out this summer, and while this presumably means he’s been guaranteed a long term contract at a lower yearly figure (known as “The Richard Jefferson”), he’s already 3 years away from the only season in his career in which he’s shown anything more than slightly-above-mediocre.

Everything comes back to Stan, though. And for Stan, it’s hard to believe that this isn’t the end. The brilliant basketball mind doesn’t matter anymore, nor do the most entertaining interviews on the planet. The face of the franchise has decreed that Stan is done, and as a defense, Stan has defied management in a public forum. Nothing about this is salvageable, not even if the masterful coach can motivate an undermanned team to an unlikely victory from under the bus Dwight threw him under.

Great, Dwight. Real mature. Just throw Stan under the bus and leave.

You’re probably going to hear a lot about these Magic’s pride, a lot about SVG wanting to prove just how good he is without Dwight. All power to them. But these Magic are looking towards the uncertain, dark future that lies after defeat, while these Pacers are looking towards the uncertain, bright future that comes with bigger stages. We at HP try very hard not to settle into easy narratives, but when the quality of basketball coincides with the psyche of the basketballers, it’s hard to look at a series and not at what comes next. In this series’ case, that glance ahead sure looks like Indiana vs. Miami and Orlando vs. Itself.

The Death Of Reason

By Eric Maroun

There is an excellent chance that Stan Van Gundy has approximately one week left as the coach of the Orlando Magic. Throughout an increasingly trying season that has seen him butt heads continually with superstar/super drama instigator Dwight Howard, Van Gundy has had more attention turned on him than in any other past season. The issues between the two reached a fever pitch when Van Gundy confirmed rumors that Howard had asked for him to be fired. Howard countered by interrupting the press conference, unaware of what Van Gundy had just said, and made the situation as awkward as a sixth grade prom by joking around with Van Gundy. Howard, of course, denied the reports and demanded to know who the reporters’ sources were. Weeks later, Howard was ruled out for the season and the Magic entered the playoffs as presumable first round fodder for the Indiana Pacers.

Operating under the assumption that he will no longer be Orlando’s coach when the season tips off next year, there are two scenarios that could potentially play out. They may each be a tad (OK, extremely) unlikely, but speculation is fun and it would certainly add entertainment to what is setting up to be an awfully bland series.

Scenario One: Van Gundy, fed up with all of the shenanigans of the year, finally throws up his hands in a fit of rage and gives in. “You want to run this team? You think you know what’s best for the franchise? Fine! You do it!” he says as he throws a clipboard and dry erase marker at Dwight Howard. Van Gundy announces to the pres s that he will remain the head coach in name only, but all decisions made on the court will be determined by Dwight Howard. Throughout the duration of the series, Van Gundy then stages the equivalent of a sit-in protest for each game by remaining firmly planted on the bench with his arms folded across the chest as he watches Dwight Howard fail mightily. The Pacers cruise to an easy 4-0 series sweep as Van Gundy smiles to himself. The day after the series is completed, Van Gundy marches into Rich DeVos’s office, slams his fist down on his desk, and proclaims, “You can’t fire me! I quit!” Weeks later, following the Heat’s elimination in the Eastern Conference Finals courtesy of the Bulls, Erik Spoelstra is let go and Van Gundy returns to his old stomping grounds. A year later, Van Gundy leads the Heat to title and proceeds to laugh in Howard’s face until the end of time.

Scenario Two: The Magic players, as annoyed with the drama that Howard has caused all season long, begin to play their best basketball of the season. No longer saddled with the feeling that they have to feed the post on every possession and not being hampered by Howard’s poor free throw shooting, everything begins to click. For the first time all season, they start having fun playing the game of basketball. With absolutely no pressure on them and an “us against the world mentality”, they march into Bankers Life Fieldhouse and stun the Pacers in Game 1 of the series. The Pacers rebound in Game 2 by blowing out Orlando by 15, but the Magic respond by taking the next two games in Orlando. With their backs against the wall, the Indiana crowd, energized by Andrew Luck’s first appearance at a Pacers game, inspires the Pacers to win Game 5. Shortly before Game 6, Van Gundy gives an impassioned speech in the locker room. Years from now, it will be described as the basketball version of Al Pacino’s Any Given Sunday “One Inch” speech. Asking his players to dig deep and leave it all out on the floor in front of the home fans, Van Gundy pulls off his most masterful coaching job yet. The Magic shoot 55% from the field while the Pacers totally collapse under the pressure. Orlando prevails 113-102 and advance to the second round. In a stunning turn of events, the Magic decide that based on this performance, they would rather hitch their wagon to Van Gundy as opposed to Howard. As a show of revenge for all of the drama Howard put them through, Otis Smith trades Howard to Charlotte as the Internet explodes and Dwight turns not into Superman, but into The Incredible Hulk smashing everything in sight.

To paraphrase Dumb and Dumber, yes, these situations have a one in a million shot at happening; I’m just saying there’s a chance.

Chemical Reactions, Tectonic Plates & You

By Noam Schiller

There was supposed to be one good matchup in this series. Just the one. And now it’s gone.

Dwight Howard vs. Roy Hibbert could have been such a fantastic contrast in style. The two centers who represented the East in this year’s all-star game, head to head. One of them a once-in-a-generation, mutant freak of nature who has added to his sheer physical dominance through refinement and the guidance of the coach he wants to fire. The other, a slender asthmatic gentle giant who gradually improved his physical shape to the point where it’s no longer a hindrance when he tries to represent his soft touch and surprising skills.

Not that this particular matchup promised much, mind you. Howard has made a habit out of destroying Hibbert – in 15 career matchups between the two, Hibbert has been mostly unremarkable, averaging 9.8 points on 44.5% shooting and almost 4 fouls in 20 minutes of playing time. These numbers are heavily skewed by Roy’s earlier years, but the picture doesn’t look much better this year, with NBA Statscube telling us the Magic have outscored the Pacers by 15.1 points per 36 minutes with both large gentlemen on the court.

And yet, this is all moot. Howard’s domineering interior presence is more than enough to shake Hibbert’s foundation. Whoever is replacing Howard? Not so much. Glen Davis, assuming he’s even healthy, gives up half a foot to the Georgetown product, and will be utterly incapable of contesting what might be this point the most effective hook shot in the game today, or of keeping a top 25 offensive rebounder off the offensive boards. Orlando might even be better off with seldom used second year player Daniel Orton against Hibbert – not because Orton has showed anything more than occasional glimmers of a potential NBA career way down the road, but because Orton is big enough to put up a fight. At least, when his lack of polish doesn’t force Stan Van Gundy to carry him off the floor.

If we do try to dig deeper into whatever is left of the Magic post-Dwight, the picture isn’t pretty at all. The offense has remained strong so far, but the has defense understandably fallen off a cliff (Orlando has given up a fairly horrendous 106.8 points per 100 possessions over their last 10 games, far outweighing the 104.7 they’ve scored, according to NBA.com). Against a team that, for better or worse, usually derives its offense from multiple contributors, this serves for more of a general unease than a specific matchup concern. Whether it’s the size advantages offered by David West against Ryan Anderson and George Hill against Jameer Nelson, or just the general firepower of a Danny Granger that’s been scorching hot lately, Orlando has everything and everywhere to worry about.

Specifically, they must worry that the only way to cover for the loss of their defensive anchor is to outscore a top 10 offense while going up against a top 10 defense. The good news is that Orlando still has enough long range offensive to potentially swing a given game. The bad news is that anything more consistent would require a return to health from both Davis, whose fantastic April splits (16.4 and 8.8 on 50% shooting after what had probably been the worst season of his career) were keeping Orlando alive, and Hedo Turkoglu, who is talented enough for us to concede that he can theoretically still be a fine perimeter creator, but who is also coming off three weeks of injury and three years of apathy.

And so, we must focus on Roy against Dwight, or the lack thereof. From the double teams that allow Anderson and J.J. Redick to roam free, to the defensive funneling that forces jump-shot happy teams to take that 20 footer instead of the one from 24 or 14, most of what Orlando does is dead in the water. Whether SVG can conjure something else given the personnel on both sides remains to be seen, but if he does, it will be something that is both new, and completely unimaginable.

As If We Knew

By Eric Maroun

It’s tempting to sit here and pick an Indiana sweep. After all, there is a legitimate case to be made that the Pacers hold an advantage in every matchup on the floor. For starters, Jameer Nelson has gone from “solid point guard on Finals team” to “wait, would I even want this guy on my team?” in the span of three seasons. The biggest reason though is the glaring loss of Dwight Howard for the Magic. Orlando won the season series with Indiana 3-1, but that is rendered completely irrelevant by the fact that Howard won’t be on the court this time around. In the regular season, he put up box scores of 14 points, 9 rebounds, 27-8, and 30-13 in the three Magic wins, and he managed a 24-13 performance in the only Magic loss against the Pacers. Without Howard on the floor, it’s difficult to see who is going to stop Roy Hibbert. Glen Davis is the next man up to take a crack at containing Hibbert, but he tweaked his ankle in a win earlier in the week against Charlotte leaving him, at best, day-to-day to begin the series.

The only thing preventing me from predicting a full Pacers sweep is that, as a Cavs fan,  I vividly remember the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals and the Magic’s ability to be absolutely lights out from 3 point range. Even though that was three years ago, this still just feels like a series where JJ Redick and/or Ryan Anderson could catch absolute fire from downtown. In the same game against Charlotte where Big Baby got hurt, Redick and Anderson combined for 55 points with Redick posting a career high 31 points on 9-19 shooting (6-10 from beyond the arc). It’s not out of the question that they could do this again if they get hot. Anderson’s best chance to make an impact in this series is going to have to rely on the simple mathematic principle that three is greater than two. He is going to have an exceedingly difficult time stopping David West at the 4 position; therefore, his best chance to counteract the points he is going to give up on the defensive end is to lure West out to the three point line and start making threes.

Orlando is a classic “live by the 3, die by the 3” team as they led the league this year in both thee point makes (10.2 per game) and three point attempts (27.0 per game), and they finished tied for third with Chicago for three point percentage (.375). Nine different times this year, the Magic made more than 15 three pointers in a game; they finished 8-1 in those games with the only loss coming in overtime to Utah. While it’s absolutely in the realm of possibility that they are able to muster one of these nights during the course of a seven game series, it seems highly unlikely they can do it any more than that.

Pacers take this one in a gentleman’s sweep, 4-1.

Conceptual Architecture

By Sean Highkin

No one series should have all that (star) power. This will be the most talked-about series of the first round, because of the markets and names involved. Both of these teams chased LeBron James in the summer of 2010, and one of them won. On the surface, there are a lot of similarities between the New York Knicks and Miami Heat. Their rosters are insanely top-heavy and pretty thin beyond the big names. Each team has one superstar who has battled injuries all year (Amar’e Stoudemire and Dwyane Wade, respectively). The Knicks boast the best interior defender in the league in Tyson Chandler, while the Heat have its best all-around player in James. Both of these teams have looked virtually unstoppable at some points during the regular season, and completely lost at others.

The Knicks in particular have had to change narratives this season more times than people can count. The most compelling of those stories, the rise of Jeremy Lin, will be a non-factor here as he sits out with a knee injury. Because of this, Baron Davis and Mike Bibby will be handling point-guard duties for New York, which can’t make Knicks fans feel too optimistic. Both of them will have to keep their turnovers down to avoid giving up easy baskets to the deadliest open-court duo in the NBA. That’s a tall order, especially against a defense as good as Miami’s.

The matchup to watch, obviously, is that of James and Carmelo Anthony, who has played out of his mind since Mike D’Antoni resigned. Beyond that, there are several players on either side who could conceivably swing the series. For the Heat, Chris Bosh’s contributions will be key, and he’ll have his work cut out for him against Chandler. If Mike Miller is able to knock down open shots, that gives Miami another offensive weapon. Ditto Steve Novak on the Knicks, whose concern isn’t as much making shots as not being too much of a liability on the defensive end. The Knicks’ ability to win the series may depend on which version of J.R. Smith decides to show up. If he heats up, there’s nothing to stop him from changing the outcome of at least one or two games.

No matter what happens, this will be the series that gets the most media attention. If the Heat lose, the “LeBron shrinks in big moments” narrative will be double that of what it was after last year’s Finals. If the Knicks lose, they’re apparently gearing up to throw an ungodly amount of money at Phil Jackson. It’s hard to pick against the Heat, because the pure talent of James and Wade is simply overwhelming. But either way, this one’s going to be fun

The Death of Reason

By Jared Dubin

- Crazy Thing That Could Happen In This Series #1 – LeBron James’ postseason disappearing act could come earlier than it has in each of the last two years. LeBron seemingly wilted under pressure in the 2010 Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics, playing passive and disinterested as the Cavaliers looked listless and fell in Games 5 and 6. Similarly, he seemed to be spontaneously invisible in the second half of the series against the Mavericks in the NBA Finals. (Of course, this conveniently ignores how dominant James was in the series’ immediately proceeding his disappearing acts. But still, a pattern has been established and it’s possible the issues could creep up yet again.)

- Crazy Thing That Could Happen In This Series #2 – Baron Davis, Mike Bibby, Toney Douglas, Mario Chalmers or Norris Cole might actually see the court in crunch time of an NBA playoff game.

- Crazy Thing That Could Happen In This Series #3 – J.R. Smith or Steve Novak could set the record for 3-pointers made in a playoff game. The way the Heat play defense, they give up a lot of open 3-pointers. Their constant trapping and rotating sometimes leaves holes on the perimeter, and good shooters from the outside can make them pay. Novak led the league in 3-point field goal percentage this season and Smith is one of the streakiest shooters in NBA history. Just a couple weeks ago the two combined for 15 3′s against the Boston Celtics’ trapping, rotating defense, and if the Heat get just a little bit lazy or slow with their help defense, New York’s shooters can bury them in record numbers.

- Crazy Thing That Could Happen In This Series #4 – LeBron and Dwyane Wade could have a bagillion highlight reel plays. The Heat overwhelmed the Knicks in the open court in their February meeting, turning 19 Knick turnovers into multiple rim-crushing dunks and fastbreak alley-oops. If the Heat can force the Knicks to turn the ball over and get out on the break, it will go a long way toward curing what was an ailing offense in April.

- Crazy Thing That Could Happen In This Series #5 – Somewhat connected to #4, Ronny Turiaf could have some all-time great facial reactions on the bench.

- Crazy Thing That Could Happen In This Series #6 – Amar’e Stoudemire could grab himself a lot of bench. There is so much lineup data out there that suggests that the Carmelo-Amar’re, Tyson-Amar’e and especially Carmelo-Tyson-Amar’e lineup combinations just do not work. With the way the Knicks played toward the end of the season with Chandler at center and Anthony at power forward, Stoudemire seems to be the odd man out here. Mike Woodson has been starting Stoudemire but taking him out early on to get Melo extended minutes as a small ball four. If that alignment proves as effective against Miami as it was in the home stretch of the regular season, will Woodson have the guts to glue Stoudemire to the bench for extended stretches before unleashing him against Miami’s softer second unit? His willingness to do so could be key for New York’s chances in the series.

- Crazy Thing That Could Happen In This Series #7 – We could potentially get a bench clearing brawl, right? It is Knicks-Heat, after all.

Chemical Reactions, Plate Tectonics & You

By Jared Dubin

If the Knicks are going to make things difficult from Miami, they’ll have to get a lift from their bench. Miami’s depth is a weakness, but New York’s is is a strength. The play of Steve Novak – who led the league in 3-point field goal percentage – J.R. Smith and Landry Fields is especially important, but the Knicks will also need solid, efficient performances from the likes of Mike Bibby and Jared Jeffries and/or Josh Harrelson and Dan Gadzuric if Jeffries can’t play through his injuries. Novak and Smith are best equipped to make the Heat pay. Miami likes to trap ball-handlers and depend on their help defense and quick rotations to close out on shooters. If the Knicks can whip the ball around the perimeter and find Novak and Smith with space beyond the arc, they can catch fire and keep New York in the game. Especially if the Heat elect to double Carmelo Anthony on the dribble drive or in the post, the ability of New York’s wings and guards to make catch-and-shoot jumpers will be of paramount importance.

The Knicks going small with Melo at the four can also cause problems for the Heat, whether he’s sharing the front court with Tyson Chandler or Amar’e Stoudemire. If Chris Bosh has to guard Anthony for any kind of extended stretch of time, he could easily get burned. Melo is at his best when he’s got the ball in the deep wing on the right side of the court and he can jab-step, pump-fake, drive and bully his way to the basket for lay-ups, offensive rebounds and free throws. Guarding him with a bigger, slower defender plays right into his hands. And if he really gets going and the Heat have to bring double teams his way, that opens things up for the likes of Novak, Smith, Iman Shumpert and Baron Davis from the outside. That’s why you saw LeBron James guarding Carmelo solo down the stretch of the last Heat-Knicks game. Once that change was made, Melo stopped attacking the basket and settled for four 3-pointers in the 4th quarter as the Heat pulled away.

It will be interesting to see what happens if and when both teams go small though. Both Anthony and James have had great success as small-ball power forwards this season, especially Anthony over the last few weeks when Amar’e Stoudemire was injured. Using their speed and quickness advantages against bigger players at the four on the offensive end led to easy baskets around the rim, and when the defenders started to play off, both Bron and Melo would make them pay from the mid-range and beyond. The move to the four also helped Carmelo immensely on the defensive end. Rather than being primarily on the perimeter where he was prone to ball watching and lazy rotations, he often found himself working underneath the basket in the post, and his weaknesses as a defender were less noticeable. He wasn’t necessarily good on that end, but he was much more active and engaged. Both James and Anthony enjoyed advantages over other power forwards, but if the team go small at the same time, those advantages may be neutralized. The few times that Anthony hasn’t been flat out dominant over the last month or so came when teams went small against the Knicks’ small-ball lineup, like when Indiana played Danny Granger as a power forward and the Bulls did the same with Luol Deng. And now that Stoudemire has returned to the lineup and Anthony has slid back to small forward, it’s likely he’ll be matched up with LeBron for most of the series. It’s nearly impossible to neutralize James, but if he gets baited into a game of one-upsmanship with Carmelo and starts isolating one-on-one instead of moving and cutting and finding Wade and Bosh and putting constant pressure on the Knicks’ maniacally rotating defense of their own, it will go a long way toward slowing him down.

The Knicks will probably send a bunch of different guys at both James and Dwyane Wade throughout the course of the series. Iman Shumpert will draw the primary duty on Wade, but he’ll also see time on LeBron. Smith and Fields will both get shots to guard each of the Heat’s perimeter threats as well. You might see Carmelo, Jeffries, Amar’e or even Novak on LeBron at some point. At different points of the game the Knicks may double each or both of them or play them strictly one-on-one. They might trap or they might not. The goal will be to keep them on their toes so they don’t know what coverage to expect on any given trip down the court. Shumpert will do an admirable job on Wade, but Flash is still going to get his. Smith has been much more dedicated on defense as a Knick than he was in Denver, but he’s still vulnerable off the dribble and on the weak side closing out on shooters. Fields loses shooters like it’s his job and can be bullied in the post if he ever has to guard James. Obviously, LeBron causes all kinds of problems for the Knicks both on the break and in the half court. He’s a freight train when working off the dribble-drive, gets to the line nearly at will and has added a refined and improved post-up arsenal to what was already the most dominant and diversified offense game in the NBA. Carmelo will do as best he can to slow him down, but they’ll have to give him lots of help. At that point it will be up to the Knicks’ other defenders to rotate out to Bosh, Wade, Mario Chalmers, Shane Battier, Mike Miller and Norris Cole. Chandler will have to be all over the court, from the 3-point line to the rim.

Speaking of New York’s defense, it does feature the one guy who caused the most problems for the Heat in last year’s NBA Finals: Defensive Player of the Year favorite Tyson Chandler. Chandler’s presence in the lane and near the rim led the way as the Knicks improved from a bottom 10 defense last season to a top 5 one this year. He’s probably the single most important defensive player in the league. His combination of energy, communication skills and versatility make him very well equipped to stymie the Heat’s three-pronged superstar attack. One way Miami can attack Chandler and the Knicks defense is to go small. Forcing Chandler to cover Chris Bosh (which he’ll likely have to do a lot of anyway, even if the Heat don’t go small much – see next paragraph) draws him out of the paint and opens up driving lanes for Wade and James. Bosh’s ability to knock down mid-range jumpers should keep Chandler away from the hoop. If they can get Wade and Bosh in pick-and-roll situations, they can very likely get Shumpert to switch on the screen (fighting through screens is the biggest among Shump’s few defensive weakness) and get a mismatch for Bosh on the block or Wade off the dribble. Shumpert has put the screws on the likes of Derrick Rose, Kobe Bryant and even Wade at times this season in isolation, but you can catch him if you throw lots of screens his way.

The Heat will obviously be looking to take advantage of Stoudemire’s poor defense as well. He’d struggle enough to defend Bosh in the Heat’s and Knicks’ normal lineups that they’ll try to hide him on Turiaf, Anthony or Haslem whenever possible by having Chandler guard Bosh for much of the game. But that brings Chandler away from the hoop and forces the Knicks to rely on Stoudemire as a rim-protector. And if Amar’e ever has to defend James when the Heat go to their small ball lineup, forget it. It will be the torching to end all torchings. The only way Stoudemire can neutralize his bad defense is by going to work on Bosh, Haslem, Anthony, James and whoever else Miami throws his way on the other end. With the way the Heat play pick-and-roll defense, Amar’e has to be able to nail that defense-stretching, 15-18 foot jumper from either elbow to keep them honest. On New York’s first unit, Chandler is usually the Knicks’ primary screener and Stoudemire comes in behind as the outlet man, and that shot should either open up for Stoudemire or else he’ll have to make another quick-hit pass to the corner or the opposite wing to find Shumpert, Novak, Smith or Fields for a 3-pointer or a side pick-and-roll opportunity. When Stoudemire is out there with the second unit, he’ll be the primary screener, and he has to know when the slip the screen to keep the defense honest and when to hold it. He’s a dangerous finisher on the roll and Davis, Bibby, Shumpert, Anthony and Smith have to keep their head up looking for him. If he can hit pick-and-pop jumpers off quick-hit passes against Miami’s traps, that’s a huge plus for the Knicks.

Both teams might also go without traditional point guards for small stretches of the series. James has functioned as Miami’s de facto backup point guard for a while now due to the inconsistent play of Norris Cole, and Woodson has shown a proclivity for playing Shumpert and Smith as his back court at times. The Shump-Smith tandem has actually been one of New York’s most effective offensive lineups this season, averaging 105.7 points per 100 possessions (pts/100). They have been pretty good defensively too, giving up just 99.7 pts/100. But the Heat’s most common 5-man lineup with LeBron at the point – James, Wade, Battier, Bosh, Haslem – was even better, scoring 112.3 pts/100 and giving up 103.4. Whether the teams go point guard-less at the same time or different times will be something interesting to watch.

The play-calling of Mike Woodson and Erik Spoelstra is sure to be a hot topic as well, as both teams are prone to stretches of ugly, disjointed, isolation-heavy basketball at times. The Knicks have been all-Melo, all-the-time lately and they’ve had a lot of success. That type of isolation-heavy approach doesn’t work against the Heat though; Miami was ranked 1st in the league in points per possession against on Isolation plays according to mySynergySports. Since Woodson became the head coach, the Knicks have run the highest percentage of isolation plays in the league, and their percentage of isolations was actually higher than any team’s percentage of any type of play. It’s a good thing Woody has shown some flashes of creativity with his play-calling in crunch time, because constant one-on-one play against the Heat is not going to cut it. Spoelstra has come been criticized for uncreative play-calling late in games, preferring to set up an isolation or high pick-and-roll opportunity for either James or Wade. James, obviously, has come under (mostly undeserved) fire for decisions on whether to take the last shot or pass the ball to a teammate. Whichever coach gets his team to move the ball, move without the ball and probe the defense until it finds the best shot will go a long way toward giving their team an advantage in the series.

The biggest mismatch of the series isn’t actually between any two players, but rather the Knicks’ biggest weakness and Miamis greatest strength. New York struggled all year with turnovers leading to easy baskets; the Knicks ranked 27th in the league in both turnover ratio and opponents’ points off turnovers per game. The Heat, of course, have thrived off forcing their opponents into turnovers and turning them into easy baskets. Miami ranked 3rd in the NBA in opponents’ turnover ratio and tied for 1st in points off turnovers per game. LeBron led the league in points off turnovers per game and Wade finished 2nd. In 3 games this year, the Heat forced the Knicks into 54 turnovers and turned them into 60 points. That rate of 20.0 points off turnovers per game was 2.3 more than the Knicks allowed as a team and would have led the NBA this season. If the Knicks don’t limit their turnovers – if they dribble directly into the Heat’s traps, if they throw lazy ball reversal passes, if they don’t watch out for double teams in the post – and they let Miami get free points, they simply have no chance at the series.

As If We Knew

By Steve McPherson

Based on all the troubles, real or imagined, that both of these teams have with getting all their tremendously talented players to play in a talented and tremendous way with each other, the best route for either team might be handing over their superstars and watching their opponent explode in a fiery ball of sheer basketball skill. How terrible would a team with Wade, James, Anthony, Stoudemire, and Bosh be? Clearly, they would be awful.

But that of course, is not going to happen. Miami won all three games between these two teams this season and there seems to be little doubt they will win this series. If New York can get comfortable with Stoudemire off the bench, expect them to bring it to Miami and draw this out to at least five and maybe six if we’re really getting into a New York state of mind. Anthony’s been on fire recently, but the playoffs have a way of tamping down individual numbers in favor of balanced offense. That’s also something that plays into Miami’s favor; even though they’ve struggled offensively recently, there’s every reason to think their cavalcade of stars will do serious damage in the early rounds.

One thing that will be interesting to watch for as it develops is James and Anthony playing the 4 for their teams. Both have had success as sort of super-strong but undersized PFs. James posted a frankly ridiculous 37.6 PER at the position, while Anthony posted a less silly but also impressive 28.9 PER as a 4. By way of contrast, Kevin Love led all “true” PFs with a PER of 25.3 for the season. But if both Anthony and James are playing PF, it’s likely to neutralize the advantages (primarily speed and shooting) both have preyed on from that spot.

Miami in 5.