As expected, there's a lot of panicking going on with Heat fans after that Game 1 performance, and there is plenty of reason to be concerned.
It appears the Bulls rebounding advantage will be a constant in this series, as it has been in the regular season. And it appears as if the Bulls defense, devised by a good defensive mind in Tom Thibodeau, has a formula for stopping LeBron James, and quite possibly also Dwyane Wade.
Well, there's also plenty of reason to remain optimistic, if you're a Heat fan, despite that Game 1 performance.
Let's start with the idea that Thibs' defense is capable of stopping James. It has, yes, just like a handful of other defenses in the league have at certain times in James' career. And as good buddy Howard Beck of the NY Times pointed out recently,Thibs' defense is difficult to penetrate for James.
But overall, the performance you saw Sunday night is not the type of performance LeBron has against that defense.
Go back to last postseason when Thibs was an assistant in Boston and the Celtics knocked out the Cavs in six games. Take out the infamous Game 5, in which LeBron was accused of quitting when he shot 3 of 14 and scored just 15 points, and his averaged are impressive.
In the other five games, he managed to put up 29.2 points, 10 rebounds, 7.2 assists a game and shoot 48 percent. Yes, his turnover totals were high, but you had to expect that from a player who was responsible for doing everything on that team. And in this regular season, in the two games LeBron played against the Bulls, LeBron averaged 27.5 points on 56 percent shooting.
Same type of thing goes for Wade. Last postseason against Boston, he averaged 33 points on 56 percent shooting against Thibs' defense. He did a lot of that with efficient outside shooting, but it's certainly something that's well within his arsenal.
Point is, don't assume that because they had one bad game against this defense that it's some sort of pattern.
As for the rebounding issues, that's going to be harder to fix. The Heat averaged less rebounds against the Bulls (33 a game) than it did against any other team in the regular season. But there is also reason to believe that LeBron and Dwyane themselves can help remedy that as well.
As Erik Spoelstra put it, those two are pretty much the best rebounders at their positions, and both have put up big rebounding numbers in this postseason already.
They're going to need to hit the boards when the help defense leaves the bigs out of position. They're certainly athletic enough to make up for the height discrepancy.
"We have to understand how important it is to finish, to make the second effort, to make that last rotation," Spo said. "A lot times that’ll be the block out and rebound.
"They’re the better rebounding players at their position, and they’ve done that all season long."
So there's some reason to believe the Heat can beat the Bulls, even if the previous four attempts have been unsuccessful.
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