What was that?
Three mud-faced men standing in fatigues while standing in the Vietnamese wild are still wondering what they say.
Suddenly, a seven-foot creature with dreads comes screaming out of the jungle with some foreign-looking weapon. And then…their imminent doom.
Sure, it’s a scene from the Predator. But watching Dwyane Wade hurl his body and head at the rim for a thunderous follow on Thursday night is all too reminiscent what the Jeremy Lin and the rest of the league is facing: The Miami Heat.
There was Joel Anthony blocking balls with his teeth and Lebron James splitting the lane and hammering the ball down like a WWE star’s finishing move.
And then, for the aesthetic juxtaposition, Chris Bosh is there spacing the court with 14-footers. They’re not sexy but they fall and you simply cannot leave him open.
Sure, we think Lebron and Wade are douchey, but they’re best in the game. The Heat have evolved into the animal we envisioned when The Decision was made. I’ve never seen anyone run the break like Lebron. Magic Johnson was the greatest; Lebron is better.
You can’t turn the ball over to the Heat because it’s an automatic two points on the break, which makes executing your offense (in this case, Jeremy Lin/Carmelo Anthony) even more difficult. The passing lanes are smaller against the Heat.
If a team is going to beat them—best bet, being the Oklahoma City Thunder or Chicago Bulls—it’s going to be on the boards and with some hot shooting, as the Dallas Mavericks did in the Finals when the Heat couldn’t collapse onto to their two or three options.
The Heat make a lot of players look pedestrian, but Jeremy Lin’s game was a reminder of how you can trap a point guard (as they did with Derrick Rose) or close off the lane with hard shows as he tries to rotate the ball back to Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire.
Stoudemire is a brilliant pick and roll player and is still among the best options in the game for attacking the rim off on the dive. They’ll have to figure out how to pass out of pick and roll to Anthony who is still the best scorer in the game.
Right now, they’re too unpolished for any of their offense to work consistently against the top defensive teams but potentially they can be among the best offenses in the game.
Contact Mike Mitchell at michaelkennethmitchell@gmail.com.
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