Miami-Oklahoma City series

The Miami Heat took a 2-1 series lead over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals with Sunday night’s 91-85 win in South Beach. If there’s a word we can sum it up in, it would be aggressiveness. The Heat aggressively hit the boards and won the rebounding battle. As is often the case, that led to free throws and Miami had a solid edge in attempts from the charity stripe, 35-24. And with the Heat hitting their free throws while the Thunder missed, the actual scoring edge in this area ended up at 31-15, and was the decisive factor in the Miami victory.

The second game of the NBA Finals followed a similar pattern as the first—a strong start by Miami followed by a second-half comeback from Oklahoma City. But this time the comeback was much more grinding, the Thunder only got one chance to tie the game and the Heat played with more discipline on the offensive end. It added up to a 100-96 win for Miami to even the series