MIAMI — The Miami Heat are at their best when they make sure you can't access your best performance, and to win the NBA Finals, allowing the Denver Nuggets to have historical outputs and winning the physical game is unacceptable.
The Heat were outrebounded by 25, only picking up 33 rebounds total — with Bam Adebayo collecting more than the rest of his teammates combined. The Heat can lose games because opponents are more talented than them — for all the talk of, there is a considerable talent disparity between the two teams.
“At our best version, we find ways to overcome that, make it tough on them and then certainly not lose the overwhelming majority of those physical battles, the 50/50 battles, the ball-in-the-air, ball-on-the-floor battles.” Mistake-free basketball can’t bake in all the missed shots in the paint. It felt like for as often as Jimmy Butler and Adebayo got there, they couldn’t convert at the rate that’s required. Butler kept noting he got “two feet in the paint,” and he was right.
If that’s the case, Butler will have to do what Miami did to Jokić in Game 2, become far more offensive-minded, and far more efficient. “I just think sometimes, for us, when we lose a lot of those physical battles, the effort plays, the loose balls, the rebounding battles, that’s our identity, and sometimes that can affect the flow of the rest of your game,” Spoelstra said.
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