some of my overarching takeaways from this game:
Miami was getting the stuffing beat outta them with all their guys, pre-Dragic injury, and ended up down 32 in a game where LeBron played maybe a C- game. That isnt a positive omen at all, and now you have to adjust your lineups absent Dragic possibly the rest of the series, and possibly absent Bam...
Clearly Miami is in serious trouble, it would be easy to default to injuries as the main problem but it isn't. Miami is too small. Miami's bench got thoroughly outplayed until the 4thQ when the game was outta reach, by LA's bench. When Bam was in he was getting rocked on both sides, and I mentioned in G1 of the ECF that dude can go really, really ghost at times, so this wasn't surprising to me...
The zone was not effective with LA going nuclear from 3. The easy response is, well LA isn't gonna be that hot again---->maybe not but that discounts a few things. 1)LA being a "bad" 3point team has been exaggerated this postseason. They aren't a team of sharpshooters and are prone to 3point droughts but they shoot about the same as Miami, who has sharpshooters and yall swear is unbelievable behind the arc...
2)LA has more ways to beat you, so if they are beating you with the 3 and you relied on that as a weakness, you're in deep shyt. Because we know they can still slam you when the 3 isn't dropping. So the answer definitely isn't, "well we'll just be okay when they arent hitting from 3"...
Now, the injuries suck and put them further behind the wall than they already were, but remember this game got outta hand with all their horses. But we've watched the NBA, injuries have impacted Finals many, many times. In this one, Miami had a slim margin of error anyway, it was alwats gonna be hard for them to win the series but unless Nunn adequately fills Dragic's minutes, we'll probably see a series that coulda went 6 or 7 end in 4 or 5...
I love the fight Miami has and I know they will come in prepared for G2. They are in serious, serious trouble, though...
