This is no longer the Indiana Pacers or the Oklahoma City Thunder. That’s the loud and clear message the San Antonio Spurs sent the Miami Heat last with the Spurs’ 92-88 win to open the 2013 NBA Finals. Whereas the Thunder in last year’s Finals, and the Pacers in this year’s Eastern finals, were susceptible down the stretch, San Antonio showed they can close games.
The NBA Finals start Thursday night in Miami, as the San Antonio Spurs come in to take on the Heat. Once Oklahoma City lost Russell Westbrook in the first round, it became apparent the Heat and Spurs were the league’s two best teams and in the predictable world that is the NBA postseason, it’s those two that end up in the Finals.
The Battle In South Beach didn’t prove to be much of a battle. The Miami Heat used a 33-16 run through the second quarter to blitz the Indiana Pacers in anticlimactic 99-76 win to win what was otherwise an excellent series to settle the championship of the Eastern Conference.
We’re headed for Game 7 in the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals. Over the last three nights, the Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers have traded decisive wins on their home floors to set up the big battle on South Beach on Monday night. Our purpose here is to look back at the lessons of Games 5 & 6, and use those to point ahead to the one-game showdown coming up.
If we’d been told at the start of the conference finals that one of these series would end up in a sweep, while the other was knotted 2-2, my guess is that most people would have assumed that San Antonio-Memphis were in a dogfight, while Miami showed Indiana who was boss. But it’s been the opposite. With both Game 4s in the books, San Antonio is celebrating its spot in the NBA Finals, while Miami heads home to South Beach hoping that homecourt advantage can help them survive the final leg of the Eastern Conference Finals.
The NBA playoffs are renowned as a time for the veterans and when being battle-tested matters more than anything else. That truism held in Game 3 of both conference finals matchups, as the San Antonio Spurs put an ironclad grip on the West, and the Miami Heat prevented the Indiana Pacers from getting any ideas in the East.
After pushing the Heat literally to the last second in a Game 1 overtime loss, Indiana stepped up and won Game 2 last night, evening the series as it heads back to the Midwest. Since this is the more compelling of the two conference finals thus far, an overview of Pacers-Heat will lead up this morning’s NBA commentary.
The conference finals in the NBA playoffs are set, as the Indiana Pacers eliminated the New York Knicks, 106-99 in Game 6 of their second round series. We’ll briefly recap the Pacers-Knicks game, and then dive into previews of the next round—Memphis-San Antonio in the West and Indiana-Miami in the East.
The New York Knicks stayed alive in the NBA playoffs and their battle with the Indiana Pacers is the only second-round series still going, with Miami, San Antonio and Memphis all punching their tickets to the conference finals over the past two nights. TheSportsNotebook’s overview of each series will start with Knicks-Pacers, which resumes Saturday night (8 PM ET, ESPN) and then look at how the Heat, Spurs and Grizzlies closed things out.
Throughout the NBA season and into the playoffs we’ve found ourselves asking whether a team can win without a just-injured star. From Rondo to Lee to Westbrook and a few others along the way, injuries have defined the 2013 chase for the NBA title. Now, with four teams within a victory of the conference finals, there’s another question lurking—can Miami win without Dwayne Wade?
The NBA’s dream of getting LeBron to go through Melo and Durant en route to a title took a hit in Game 3 of the NBA postseason’s second round. New York and Oklahoma City missed their first chance to reclaim homecourt advantage, losing in Indiana and Memphis yesterday. TheSportsNotebook start with these two matchups as we overview the four ongoing series, as they head for Game 4
All four second-round matchups in the NBA playoffs are knotted at a game apiece, and now it’s up to the underdogs (Golden State, Memphis, Indiana, Chicago) to prove they can defend their home floor as the venues shift for the middle games that start on Friday night. Other than the Bulls, the other three underdogs give the feel of being in control of their series none more so than Golden State.