Prognosti-Ranking the 2012 Finals: Spurs vs Heat
Please see the parts I, II, and III of the Prognosti-Rank series for our picks through the first 3 rounds of the playoffs.
And so, it comes to this. The predicted finals matchup. I'm really not 100% confident about the Western team here, as you may have gathered by this whole exercise. I think if the Grizzlies win against the Spurs, they'll probably be good enough to beat the Thunder, but not necessarily. And I think the Thunder could -- if they steal game one and Durant has a breakout series going up against Kawhi Leonard or Tony Allen -- potentially oust either the Spurs or the Grizzlies. And honestly? I could see the Lakers in here as well, because if Bynum puts it together they're a team that can blow out any team in the league, four times in a row. Home, road, wherever. There are any number of combinations for the final western team standing that makes sense to me. One thing you would've had trouble convincing me of before the season, though, would've been that any of them stood a chance against the Heat (who I've had penciled in as the presumptive Eastern champion since opening night). In my season preview -- "A Lion in Autumn" -- I essentially gave the Heat the trophy. I didn't think any team in the west would have the firepower to beat them. At this point, though, given the vulnerabilities the Heat have shown this year? I'm officially not certain that any of them CAN'T beat the Heat in a series.
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The key to the finals isn't any lazy narrative about LeBron, or a tedious joke about Chris Bosh. The key to Miami's title hopes, realistically, is going to be how Spolestra adjusts when teams key on his stars in the Finals. Last year, despite my general admiration for the job Spolestra did over the whole season, he flunked the final. Carlisle and Casey put their heads together and generated a fantastic scheme, one that kept Wade from record-breaking numbers and one that bottled LeBron up in the most embarrassing possible way. While I think the Heat make another finals, I don't think it's going to be a cakewalk, even in a depleted east -- I have both their series against Chicago and their series against Indiana going 6 or 7 games, as you may have noted. And despite the game one blowout, I'm not 100% positive the Knicks can't steal a game or two as well (though without Shumpert I'm less confident in that assessment).
The long and short of it is that as they enter the finals, I don't think the Heat are going to be quite as rested and coasting as they were last year. The gap between them and the rest of the East isn't as vast, and this year's Heat team is far more prime to random bouts of in-game coasting, much like the 2009-2011 Lakers. The reasons are several-fold, but primarily what separates all our highest expectations for the Heat from their reality lies in the supporting cast. Chris Bosh's awful year, the disappointing plummet of Norris Cole, and Udonis Haslem's incredible collapse as a contributing player. Wade's defense is as good as ever, but his offensive attack has been slightly less efficient and slightly more prone to the occasional "Wade can't jump tonight" games you see from aging athleticism-reliant superstars. The overall schema of this Heat team has become a relatively one-dimensional exhibition of the incredible might of LeBron James. It's more akin to LeBron's late 2000s Cavs teams than the talent-dripping death machine we thought we'd have, preseason. And to the Western champion, that's totally fine by them.
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