CHICAGOOne series down, one to go. One team in, one still TBD.
The Dallas Mavericks and the Oklahoma City Thunder, in the most obvious of ways, are a couple of teams headed in different directions. The Mavericks, by virtue of their 100-96 victory Wednesday night in Game 5 of the Western Conference finals, are headed to The Finals for the first time since 2006, hoping this time to be the ones who win four. The Thunder, at the tail end of a terrific year, are headed back to OKC to clean out lockers and then into a long, uncertain offseason.
The Miami Heat and the Chicago Bulls are a couple of teams headed in different directions, too. It's not as obvious yet as what's already occurred in the West the Bulls still have life, down 3-1 in the Eastern Conference finals with Game 5 Thursday night at United Center but we don't need graph paper to know which way their slopes are pointing. In trending terms, the Heat are headed up. The Bulls . well, not so much.
Miami right now looks more like it was supposed to, more like the vision that team president Pat Riley and head coach Erik Spoelstra imagined when they first put this bunch together.
With gritty forward Udonis Haslem back, patrolling the paint as a rebounder and defender, a lot of the big-man misery endured by the Heat over the past six months or so is no more. Haslem, a rock for Miami dating to its own 2006 appearance in The Finals, was to have been there all along and would have been, if not for the ligament surgery that shut him down in November.
With Mike Miller actually taking, never mind making, the deep jump shots that are the very best part of his admirable overall game, defenders already worn out from trying to cover the Heat's Big Three have that much farther to run. At various times this season, James Jones and Eddie House have checked that box in the Heat's attack, but the guy penciled in from the start if not for his own injuries and sometimes maddening reluctance has been Miller.
"It never crossed my mind," Spoelstra said after Miami's practice Wednesday on the prospect of having this team, the preferred lineup and rotation, when he needed it most. "Six weeks ago, my training staff was tempering my expectations, that it probably wouldn't happen that UD would come back. So I wasn't even planning on UD. And a month ago, Mike had just ruptured his ligament in his left thumb, so I didn't know how productive he'd be in the playoffs."
He's productive now. And now is what counts.
James lately has been as complete as NBA fans can recall, a prolific scorer who has drawn more raves as a distributor (Game 3) and as a defender (Game 4 on Chicago's Derrick Rose) in this series. Bosh, after an emotional and spotty season in which most of his production came from open jumpers neglected by opposing defenses, has actively earned his numbers against the Bulls via movement, effort and heady play.
Wade's scoring and shooting are off, but he still brings enough to alter Chicago's game at the other end of the floor. Mix in Joel Anthony's grinding, Mario Chalmers' aggressiveness and some helpful cameo work by Mike Bibby and what we're seeing is the Heat in full. Or as full as this 2010-11 edition could have hoped to become. At just the right time.
The Bulls, by the standards they set from November into April, are in decline. Frankly, they're a little like the Indiana Pacers team they beat in the playoffs' first round: they're left to draw inspiration from the fact they've "been in every game." The trouble with that is, as Frank Vogel, Danny Granger and the rest of the Pacers found out, is that you can be in every game right up to the moment you have no more games to be in.
"We got to stay positive," forward Luol Deng said Wednesday. "It's the position we're in. We're not happy with being down 3-1. But hey, this is what it is. Got no choice."
It's an uncomfortable fit for a team that won 71 of its first 94 games this season and postseason. Derrick Rose, so reliable as a closer in his breakthrough MVP season that Chicago came to lean on him perhaps too heavily late in games, has struggled against Miami's fourth-quarter scrutiny.
The bench, so deep and complete, has been thinned backup center Omer Asik, a marvel at protecting the rim without fouling, suffered a broken fibula in his left leg in Game 3 and got shut down after two minutes Tuesday. Coach Tom Thibodeau, the NBA's Coach of the Year, hasn't been able to counter Spoelstra's moves, at least not effectively enough to change the scoreboard.
Deng has tried to create offense, which for him is seemingly desperate and definitely out of character. Marksman Kyle Korver has been a scattershooter. The Bulls' motor man, center Joakim Noah, has been pinging and missing, thrown off by whistles, taunts and the Heat's newfound inside game.
And now the Bulls the team that never had lost three in a row this season, until it happened this week have to win three in a row. Do that and they're Dallas, ending a Finals drought for the franchise that dates back 13 years. Don't do that and they're Oklahoma City, a budding team long on promise and tee times.
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