HEAT IS ON: LeBron James and the Heat will try to knock off the Pacers in tonight’s Game 7 and reach the finals for the third straight season. (
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MIAMI — It was less than two weeks ago that these Eastern Conference Finals began with the Heat, led by the NBA’s Most Valuable Player LeBron James, having gone 45-3 in their previous 48 games.
But that feels like a lifetime ago, after the Heat have seen the young, upstart Indiana Pacers battle them to a draw through the first six games of the series, with Game 7 on tap for tonight, a contest that could have ramifications that go beyond who will face the Spurs in the NBA Finals when they begin Thursday night.
When James agreed to team up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh and play for the Heat in the summer of 2010, it was expected to be the dawning of a new age in the NBA, and the birth of a dynasty, thanks to three of the game’s top players joining forces in the primes of their respective careers.
Instead, after losing to the Mavericks in the 2011 Finals before winning the title last season, James is now having to try to seemingly drag Wade, Bosh and the rest of his Heat teammates into the Finals single-handedly, as Indiana’s suffocating defense — combined with a knee injury for Wade and an ankle injury for Bosh — have turned his sidekicks into virtual non-factors in the series.
“I mean, we can state the obvious,” James said bluntly after Game 6. “They’re both struggling.”
While he has continued to put up spectacular stat lines throughout the series, including finishing with 29 points, seven rebounds and six assists in Miami’s loss in Game 6, he has gotten little to no help from Miami’s other two max players. Wade finished with 10 points on 3-for-11 shooting in Game 6, while Bosh had just five points on 1-for-8 shooting.
“I thought early on I got some good shots, but I just missed them,” said Wade, who had just one point at halftime before scoring nine in the third quarter. “In the third quarter I felt like I was getting into a grove a little bit.
“We just have to do a good job of getting opportunities for me and Chris to succeed.”
Bosh, who has struggled to deal with the massive size advantage Pacers center Roy Hibbert has against him all series, said he has to figure out what’s going wrong for him.
“I have to get back in the gym and work on my game,” Bosh said. “That’s about the only thing that will help me now. My rhythm just seems off … it’s been like that the whole series, and now I have to go find it. I’ve got 48 hours to do that.”
The possible ramifications of the Heat losing this series are clear, given that a year from now all three players can opt out of the final two years of the six-year contracts they signed back in 2010 and hit the open market. And if the Heat fail to claim a title yet again, James could look around and decide that the grass is indeed greener somewhere else — be it back in Cleveland, in Los Angeles or someplace else.
That only adds to the drama of tonight’s game, one that caps what has been an intensely competitive and wildly entertaining series.
“The best thing about this opportunity right here is we worked all season long to get homecourt advantage,” James said. “This is the position we’re in, and those guys are professionals.
“As champions, we’ll figure it out. And me, as the leader, I’ll have to help them figure it out.”