Note: all images obtained from a Google image search at google.com
Note: all statistics obtained from ESPN.com unless hyperlinked
#1 Chicago Bulls vs. #2 Miami Heat
Regular Season Results: Bulls won 3-0
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| Expect a lot of contested shots amongst these 3 over the next 2 weeks. |
Analysis of matchups:
Point Guard
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| The rightful MVP. |
What more needs to be said? The Bulls feature Derrick Rose, the recently-crowned league MVP, who provides the ultimate mismatch for any defense. Hopefully his back doesn’t hurt too much, since he’s been carrying his Chicago teammates all year long. In all seriousness though, any dip in Rose’s play will spell the undoing for the East’s top seed, as he shoulders such a load offensively for the Bulls that they simply will not be able to overcome less-than-stellar play from their floor general. Of particular concern for Chicago has to be Rose’s lackluster postseason outside shooting. Though Rose is averaging more points in the postseason than during the regular season (28.8 vs. 25 ppg), his minutes predictably are up (37.4 to 40) and he’s taking more shots (19.7 to 23.3) and 3’s (4.8 to 6.5). And he’s making a lower percentage of his shots, as his FG% is down to 41.8% from 44.5%, as is his 3FG% (33.2% to 25.4%). However, the Bulls are heartened by Rose’s marked improvement in drawing fouls and reaching the free throw line, as his FT shooting numbers are considerably up (6.9 to 9.3). Rose has dealt with a sprained ankle he aggravated at the end of Game 1 of the Atlanta series, but ever the professional, he never has used it as an excuse. And he will have to be best player in this series, better than LeBron and Wade both, for Chicago to make their first post-Jordan NBA Finals appearance.
Mike Bibby has been a member of the Heat for 22 games plus 10 playoff games since his trade from Atlanta and subsequent buyout by Washington, but let’s face it, he’s just not good anymore (remember, Atlanta traded him for Kirk Hinrich, hoping they would get an upgrade at backup PG). He hasn’t been good in 4 years. His assists per game have declined every year over that span. He’s a liability defensively, and obviously has no prayer of staying in front of Rose. The one thing he brings to the table is 3-point shooting (he shot a career-best 44% this season), but the Heat have 2 other taller and more athletic players who can also shoot 3’s (James Jones and Mike Miller). Bibby has averaged just 20.5 minutes per game this postseason, while backup Mario Chalmers plays at a 24.8 mpg clip. Good thing Miami has taken note of this and played Chalmers more, as Chalmers ranks 7th among all players this postseason with a +/- of 69 (a measure of how the score changes while a player is in the game), while Bibby isn’t in the top 50. Miami will also often play SG Dwayne Wade at the point, eschewing the traditional point guard completely, and may need to go to a PG-less lineup more frequently this series, for defensive reasons.
GIGANTIC Advantage: Chicago
Shooting Guard
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| The best player on Miami. Maybe not the most talented, but the best. |
As big of an advantage as Chicago has at the point, Miami has an equally large advantage at the off-guard spot. Dwayne Wade is back in 2006 Finals MVP form, playing at an MVP-level all season long. His awe-inspiring performance throughout the Boston series carried Miami, and his herculean efforts will be on full display come Sunday night. The Bulls really don’t have an excellent on-ball defender to check him, since they’ll also have to deal with LeBron on the other wing, so an aggressive Wade could be lethal to the Bulls’ chances. One thing Wade is not is a good outside shooter; he’s upped his 3-point attempts this season (1.9 for his career, 2.7 for the 2010-11 season), and he’s making 3’s at just a 25% clip in 10 postseason games so far. If Chicago’s bigs can consistently knock Wade down on his drives to the lane, he may be decreasingly likely to go inside and would rather take outside jumpers. If he falls in love with his average outside stroke, Chicago can and will exploit it.
Keith Bogans is the starter for Chicago, but he doesn’t bring a great deal to the table, and frequently splits time with backups Ronnie Brewer and Kyle Korver. He’s shot the 3-ball well this postseason (19/39, 48.7%), and he’s a decent defender. But he’ll be greatly tested to stay in front of Wade in this series.
GIGANTIC Advantage: Miami
Small Forward
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| Hey LeBron, you gonna help D-Wade and be the MVP we all know you can be? |
This matchup isn’t as one-sided as you may think. Sure, LeBron James is a 2-time MVP, averages a 27-7-7 for his career, and has arguably as much basketball talent as anyone who has ever graced the planet earth. But he has reached just one NBA Finals, and fled to Cleveland for Miami and the help of a fellow superstar in the hopes of achieving that championship dream. James has been examined ad nauseum by friends, teammates, coaches, heck, even the barber down the street, so I won’t attempt to scrutinize his psyche further here. What I will say is that he can disappear for long stretches of games, leaving the heavy lifting to Wade. And he also takes way too many outside shots for my liking, especially for someone who’s built like a dump truck like he is (just a 32.9% career 3-point shooter). But when he’s active, involved, and attacking, there is no player in the world more breath-taking to watch than LeBron.
Chicago features Luol Deng, who is probably the captain of the NBA’s all-underrated team. Deng has always been a capable scorer (career 16 ppg) and shooter (47.1%), and is an athletic, long defender. His assignment is now against James, arguably the most difficult individual matchup in the league. The key to stopping James is similar to stopping Wade: pack it in with your interior defenders, knock James down on his drives, and convince him to take more outside jumpers than he probably should.
Substantial Advantage: Miami
Power Forward
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| The determining factor of this series. |
The key to the series lies here, as both Bulls PF Carlos Boozer and Heat PF Chris Bosh are capable of carrying their teams’ offenses for stretches, but have been oft-criticized for their no-shows at crucial moments in the postseason. Freed from no longer having to go toe-to-toe with the best post defender of this generation (Kevin Garnett), Bosh should find himself able to function more openly in the Heat offense. Bosh’s 20 points and 12 boards in Miami’s Game 4 win in Boston in the conference semis were the key to the victory; he holds the keys to Miami’s chances of advancing to the NBA Finals.
On the other side of the coin lies the enigma that has become Mr. Boozer, whose playoff failings thus far have been much-documented. He has been dealing with a turf toe injury in the postseason, which provides a good reason as to why Boozer’s numbers have plummeted from 17.5 points per game on 51% shooting to 11.8 ppg and 44.5%. To say Boozer has been a liability in the first two playoff rounds is inaccurate: Boozer’s rebounding numbers are virtually the same (9.6 vs. 9.5), and his free throw shooting has been considerably better (70.1% vs. 82.8%). And he finally showed up offensively in the Bulls’ clincher in Atlanta in Game 6, submitting a 23-point, 10-rebound, 5-assist performance in a series-high 35 minutes. For Chicago to advance to the NBA Finals, they need Boozer’s pick-and-pop to be flourishing alongside Rose’s penetrating and kicking. Much like Bosh determines the fate of Miami, so too does Boozer for Chicago.
Slight Advantage: Miami
Center
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| Hey man, you got a problem? |
Thank goodness Coach Erik Spoelstra finally saw the light: Zydrunas Ilgauskas, never the most fleet of foot at center, has become so wooden now that he’s to the point of being unusable, so Spoelstra has gone to energetic and spry Joel Anthony, who is such a fan-favorite that Heat fans chant “M-V-P!” when he goes to the free-throw line. It’s rare for a 2-ppg player to have such an impact on a team, but Anthony is well-respected by his teammates for his relentlessness on the boards and tenacity on the defensive end, and seems to relish his unheralded role on the Heat club. He’s also a great representative of the sheer will it takes for some players to reach the NBA level, as Anthony was undrafted out of UNLV and made the Heat out of Summer League as a 25-year-old rookie in 2007. And he has taken advantage of his opportunity tremendously, and is now starting and playing big minutes on an NBA Finals contender (his minutes are up from 19 in the regular season to 31 in 10 postseason games). He likely will be assigned the pivotal role of defending the high pick-and-roll and challenging Boozer in this series.
Joakim Noah, chief antagonist of the Bulls and someone you’d love to have on your team and hate to play against, mans the middle for the White and Red. He’s never been, and never will be, much of a scorer (his 11.7 ppg during the 2010-11 season was a career-best), but he isn’t asked to be by his club. His impact lies completely in his pick-and-roll and individual defensive excellence and in his rebounding proficiency. The Bulls MUST rebound effectively in the series and limit Miami’s second-chance opportunities to win; Miami has more offensive weaponry than does Chicago, and asking a defense to stop LeBron and Wade multiple times on a single possession is a daunting task, even for a stout defense like Chicago’s. Noah and his frontcourt mates must prevent Bosh and Joel Anthony from tip-ins and offensive rebounds.
Notable Advantage: Chicago
Bench
Chicago legitimately goes 10-deep with its rotation, succeeding at times while playing reserves at all 5 spots. The Bulls have great difficulty scoring with a lineup featuring backup C.J. Watson at point guard, but their team defense doesn’t even remotely regress. SG Ronnie Brewer is a pesky defender, and the Bulls have 3 legitimate big guys off the bench they can go to in Taj Gibson, Omer Asik, and Kurt Thomas. Korver provides sharp shooting off the bench, and can light up in a hurry (47.4% from 3 this postseason).
Miami’s bench is noticeably shorter and much less effective most nights. SG James Jones dropped 25 points and 5 3’s on Boston in Miami’s game 1 win in the last round – then scored a combined 11 points over 97 minutes combined over the next 4 games. Juwan Howard has supplanted Ilgauskas in the rotation, and let’s just say he’s not exactly the 1995 version of Juwan Howard. Mike Miller’s never truly looked right after missing the season’s first 28 games due to a thumb injury (and is averaging just 5 minutes per postseason game). Mario Chalmers and Jones are the only two even remotely reliable reserves available to Miami.
Notable Advantage: Chicago
Coaching
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| In Spo he trusts. |
Both head coaches are inexperienced in their current gigs (Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau is in his rookie season as head coach, while Spoelstra is in just his 3rd year as the head man for Miami), but both feature deep and wide-ranging experiences within the NBA. Spoelstra knows the Miami organization inside and out, having began as a video coordinator with the club in 1995. Thibodeau, recently awarded the 2010-11 NBA Coach of the Year, was most recently the associate head coach under Doc Rivers in Boston, and is widely regarded as the architect of the Celtics’ dominant (and in the case of 2007-08, league-leading) defense. He has taken his talents to Chicago (I couldn’t go the whole column without that pun) and transformed the Bulls into the NBA’s best in ESPN analyst John Hollinger’s Defensive Efficiency metric (the number of points an opponent scores per 100 possessions). I give Thibodeau the slight edge here due to the defensive proficiency of his Bulls, but Spoelstra isn’t to be underestimated. No coach is more prepared than Coach Spo, and given all the trials and tribulations his Heat team has gone through this year, what’s one more?
Slight Advantage: Chicago
Intangibles
Miami is peaking at exactly the right time, while Chicago needed 6 games to dispatch the schizophrenic Atlanta Hawks in the previous round. Although Miami’s post-victory celebration in its win over Boston was much-maligned, they deserved the chance to rejoice, as LeBron and Wade got past their Beantown nemesis for the first time. Now they take their evil empire to the Windy City, who, along with their leader, have a major axe to grind against their South Beach foes and would like nothing more than to spoil the party. Chicago certainly has the Court of Public Opinion on their side, but Miami comes to town with confidence, swagger, and a pair of superstars who’ve carried a massive set of expectations from the moment they put pen to paper on their new contracts last summer. LeBron and Wade have each performed at MVP-caliber levels all season-long; do they, particularly Wade, have the legs for two more playoff series?
Slight Advantage: Miami
The pick: Chicago in 7
Expect a lot of chippiness: Rose is still a bit peeved that Wade spurned his hometown team for the glitz and glamour of Miami; Joakim Noah may be the most disliked player in the league among opponents, and you know he may come to blows with Bosh or even another instigator like Juwan Howard; Wade has some punk in his game, and he will be assigned the task of guarding Rose for much of the series. Both teams are excellent defensively, both have plenty of weapons from the 3-point line, and both unquestionably feature star power. The mysterious disappearance of Carlos Boozer may come back to rear its ugly head for Chicago; if they are challenged to score in the interior against Miami’s weakness, their lack of intimidation in their frontline, the Bulls have no chance. But Boozer’s breakthrough Game 6 in Atlanta is harbinger of things to come in my opinion, and I believe in this Bulls team. In the end, it comes down to a 2.5-man team (Miami) against a defensive juggernaut led by the league’s MVP. Sure, two superstars are better than one. But if you get no help from anywhere else in the lineup (yep, that comment is for you, Chris Bosh), even 2 superstars won’t defeat the consummate team Chicago has assembled. Miami gives Chicago everything it can handle, but ultimately comes up just short of besting Rose’s Bulls in an epic 7-game slugfest that may be better represented in a heavyweight title bout than on a basketball court. Don’t expect many games to reach 90, let alone 100 points (even LeBron says so). But you don’t need mountains of points to be scored for this to be an entertaining series. Buckle up, boys and girls; we’re in for quite a treat.
In this column, I professed that Miami vs. Boston would be a battle for the soul of basketball. Well, round 2 of that battle is about to begin, and Chicago is much more equipped to defeat Miami than Boston was. Expect an astoundingly competitive and well-played series full of breathtaking moments and no love lost; it’s going to be fun to watch.
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