Point Guard - Carlos Arroyo would be bad as your sixth/seventh man but if he's starting, I don't think you can win a title. After all Wade, Bron and Bosh need somebody to flow the offense. Otherwise it's way out of sync and hard for more than one guy to get involved. It looks like an international game when the US team never practiced together before the tournament started. In tonight's game, Bron goes off and D-Wade disappears.
Center - Joel Anthony. I hadn't heard of him until Miami signed him. He can't be playing meaningful minutes on any serious team. Sucks on offence, soft as Jell-O on defense. Serves no purpose other than to eat up space.
Chris Bosh - Had a pretty decent night tonight on offense but was awful on defense. You might be able to get away with this on certain teams (Nowitzki's Mav's, Stoudamire's Suns) but not when Joel Anthony is at C. This leaves the frontcourt nearly unguarded and completely outmanned on the glass. LeBron can be a lock down defender but he can't guard the whole baseline, especially when Arroyo is getting torched by opposing PG's off the dribble. Easy baskets abound. Bosh needs to do more than 15 and 7 to justify his matador D.
Chemistry - As of right now, LeBron and Wade can't play well together, especially without a real PG directing traffic. They can only really make shot opportunities for themselves, so when they try and get in the game, it has to come at the expense of the other. When one of them goes out, the team play gets far crisper. They should do line shifts like a hockey team.
Grit - Nobody on this team has any toughness. Maybe Udonis but he's a 6-7 PF who doesn't scare anybody. James, Wade and Bosh all lack any kind of rough edge. When you hear LeBron talking about how they need to be chippy, that's the sign that he can't do it. You never heard Laimbeer, Rambis, McHale or KG talking about the need to be "a little chippy" they just clotheslined people. I'm not sure other elite teams are afraid of or respect Miami at all right now.
Coaching - I didn't understand why Cleveland ran a slow offense when they had LeBron and I really don't get why Miami runs a slow O either. When you have skill guys like Wade and James who work best in open spaces and a guy like Bosh who only works at all in an up tempo game where he can focus on offense and not play so much half court D, you have to push it up the court every possession. Miami put themselves in this hole by signing human statute Ilgauskas, marginal Haslem, a washed up Eddie House and a PG who can't start or run the break. So far the result has been 2 losses to Boston where they trailed by 20.
I'm not sure what Miami can do to solve these problems. I don't think there's any way they can admit defeat and trade Bosh for size and rebounding and there isn't a pass oriented PG out there who can play any D. The only guards out there are Allen Iverson types who choke the life out of the ball, not what Miami needs. The Heat are still going to have a really good regular season record because James and Wade will feast on the plethora of awful teams in the NBA but come playoff time they won't be able hide these deficiencies, especially the horrendous D. Boston isn't exactly an offensive juggernaut and they dropped 112 on them tonight. On the road. Yikes. Miami reminds me of the Seattle Mariners in the late 90's. Good enough to win 90-100 games because they feasted on bad teams in the west but they always got trounded by the Yankees or Red Sox because they weren't dominant in any one area. Unless Wade or James really changes their game and become a magic-esque point guard/forward, I don't see how they get into the finals. They'll be like Orlando last year, sweep the hapless Atlanta Hawks then get outclassed by Boston.
FUN FACTS! - Here are some fun stat lines from tonights game(amazing it was even close):
Joel Anthony - 8 min, 0 pts., 0 reb., 0 ast., 1 pf. This guy was the starting C.
Carlos Arroyo - 10 min., 4 pts., 0 everything else. That includes assists. This guy started at PG.
D-Wade - 40 min.(!), 8 pts., 1 reb., 3 asts. James went off, so he couldn't.
Haslem - 33 min., 21 pts., 10 reb. Udonis can't be counted on to play 33 min at C. He's 6-8. KG, Dwight Howard, Big Baby will eat him up.
Z - 19 minutes, 6 pts., 6 rebs. There isn't a stat to quantify horrible D but if Z is in for 19 minutes and only giving you 6 & 6, you're screwed.
Eddie House - 13 pts., 0 asts. No assists for either PG. Nice. Rondo had 16.
Mario Chalmers - The supposed next Rondo played 5 min and racked up 1 whole rebound.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment