MIAMI — Several times around the start of the playoffs, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra insisted that the postseason path his team would wind up navigating had the potential to be more challenging than the route it took to the NBA championship a year ago.
He is apparently correct, as the defending NBA champions are in a bit of trouble. They can’t get enough rebounds, can’t get Dwyane Wade on track, can’t get consistency out of Chris Bosh — and will likely see all those story lines either grow exponentially or disappear tonight, when they host the Pacers in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals, which is tied at two games apiece.
“We have a great locker room of alpha competitors,” Spoelstra said yesterday. “And so they take this very seriously. We’re playing against a worthy opponent and if we don’t play well, they beat us.”
Confidence is not exactly in short supply around the Pacers right now.
“We’ve got to be at our best,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said yesterday. “Our intensity, our determination, our focus, we’ve got to keep getting better if we’re going to beat this team.”
Miami is better at forcing turnovers, the Pacers are better at rebounding. The Pacers are outrebounding the Heat by 10 boards per game. Pacers center Roy Hibbert is averaging 12 rebounds; Bosh has grabbed 13 rebounds — total — in the series.
“We know what they run, they know what we run,” Hibbert said. “So I guess it’s more about who wants it more.”
Hibbert has had no match in this series. Miami plays without a true center, and Bosh often ends up in the same general spots on offense as a guard would. So at 7-foot-2, Hibbert has picked the right time to play the series of his life.
“We don’t want to go home,” Hibbert said. “Miami is one of the best teams, along with San Antonio, and we know we have an uphill battle and we trust each other and love each other and that’s just grown, that love for each other. This is probably the first team I’ve felt like that about because last year even there were some guys were not all about winning.”
“We missed an opportunity to go up 3-1,” Bosh said. “But we did get home-court back. We did our job. We have to come out and play with a lot of passion.”