NBA Champs: The Miami Heat

“We wanted it, we took it.” D Wade after the heat game 6 victory to win the NBA title.

Last night the Miami Heat won their first NBA title in franchise history. They came back from 2-0 series deficit to stun the state of Texas as they thought they would be crowned NBA champs this year. In game 6 last night, Wade, excuse me I mean the Heat came back from an early first quarter deficit to win the game. Now I have a few thoughts on this series and you are about to read them…

I had Dallas in 7 to start the series. I thought Dallas was the better team coming into the Finals. I thought Dallas had the momentum coming in, but I guess the series with Phoenix took too much out of them.

To start things off I would like to congratulate the Heat on winning the NBA title, because no matter what anyone will say, the Heat won the series and Dallas did not. But with that said I do believe that something fishy happened in this series. Now, I am not the kind of guy to yell conspiracy theory like the next fan of the NBA, but I am the guy who will point out some reasons why their may have been a conspiracy.

First things first, the free throws disparity was in huge favor of Miami. I went back and counted up the attempts and it backed up my statement (Mia:207, Dal: 155) and also included the deciding game in the series, game 5, in which Miami doubled up on free throw attempts (49-25). That is a huge disparity in free throw attempts for the game considering Shaq only took 12 FT’s. Now I know it has become commonplace to blame the ref’s for losses in every sport. The losing team never really lost the game, the ref’s did. It is very similar to Shawshank Redemption; no one in the prison committed any crimes. But with that said the Ref’s suck and something needs to be done.

The play that will be looked at forever is the phantom foul call on Dirk in overtime of game 5. While watching the game live I thought it could have been called a foul, but the more I look at that play there is no way that is a foul. No one even touched Wade on his way to the hoop. So you ask why Wade is getting a call that even Jordan wouldn’t receive. And there are two simple answers. The first is the NBA is in dire need of the next loveable superstar and Wade fits that bill. The second is the NBA does not want Shaq and Kobe on the same level. As long as Shaq didn’t win another title, fans could say Kobe or Shaq couldn’t win titles on their own. But now that Shaq has one without Kobe, David Stern can market Shaq as the better of the two and bring Kobe down another notch, and we all know how much the NBA loves to hate on Kobe now.

There was a second controversial call in game 5. While Wade was in middle of sinking the game winning free throws Avery Johnson signaled to Josh Howard to call a Timeout after the second free throw, however the Ref’s see this and think that Johnson was calling a timeout for then. Which is absurd, there is no reason to call a timeout there. Now, on the one hand the ref’s are not there to determine what the coach really means, but they are there to be the cooler heads. They are there to make sure the game is running as it is supposed to. So technically they had no obligation to huddle up and be like ok he didn’t want the timeout now, he wants it after the second free throw. But, at the same time they should have known the gravity of the situation and should have huddled up and corrected the situation. Now of course if the ref’s did do this it didn’t mean that the Mavs would have won the game, but they would have had a much better chance.

The ref’s weren’t the reason why the Dallas lost this series. They definitely hindered their chanced to win the series, but the reason why Dallas lost was because Dirk didn’t show up. He was shut down in the final four games of the series. Give credit to the Miami defense because Dirk was playing the best individual ball in the playoffs until Wade completely took the next step to the pantheon level of greatness. Wade completely raised his level of play in the finals, and put on one of the greatest performances in NBA Finals history.

While watching SportsCenter this morning, Tim Legler said DWade is the "greatest combo of athleticism and control that I have seen". Is he really? Kobe, Jordan, LeBron these guys aren’t better than Wade? Of course not, the guys in the media are trying to market Wade as THE next big thing in the NBA. It is crazy, because Wade is good, but how good is he really? I think most people can play the way Wade does when they have the Big Fella with them. Everyone is slurping what Mighty Mouse does. Wade deserves most of the praise he receives because he did play well even when Shaq isn’t around, but still the "greatest combo of athleticism and control that I have seen” that may be taking it a little too far.

Mark Cuban. This guy gets fined for all of his comments; of course they are all warranted, but even still. Is there any other sport that has an owner and commissioner clash so much as Cuban and Stern do? With that said, I totally think Cuban said to Stern about the league being fixed. I completely believe that Cuban would say something like that to the Commish, but there is a time and a place. You don’t yell that courtside after game 5, you do it in private and I’m sure David Stern told Cuban that.

As a whole the NBA Finals, as well as the rest of the NBA Playoffs were very well played and very exciting. This just adds to the growing popularity of the sport. Now all the League needs to do is solved the problem with the ref’s.

Just some quick thoughts on the Sox now…

I am very happy to see them on a 5 game winning streak after that embarrassing series with the twins last week. They really turned it around and they are playing much better baseball. I am very happy with Lester being our number 4 starter and we just need to get rid of Clement and find a new number 5 starter.

I am also pleased to see that they are taking the wheels off of our young arms in the ‘Pen. Craig Hanson, Manny Delcarmen, and Abe Alvarez should prosper with the big club and I want to see them in more pressure spots. And as I saw on Boston Sports Tonight this morning, Andy Gresh said that we finally have that flamethrower that can come in and just blow away the Yankee hitters late in the game. It will be very exciting to see how these kids turn out by the end of the year and if the plans stay on course, we will be raising another World Series Title come this October and all because of the kids.