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Well that's what the media was saying that come playoff time you can't just jack up your energy and defense and start playing well.

What people FAIL to understand is that this team was CRUISING to the playoffs WAITING for the regular season to end.

You think they cared if they have to go Chicago possibly 4 times? NO because last year was no problem and we are evidently a much deeper team this time round.

My prediction is Heat v Spurs and LeBron to exercise demons from his Cleveland days and last season.

it was one game...but yeah they looked great.

I had no worry about how focused these guys would come out for the playoffs. It's all about execution now.

This would be a funny thread if they lost Game 2.


Look, the Heat came out wanting to beat some a$$ and they did. THey were focused. TrueRain is right, the execution is what I was mostly concerned about. What if the Knicks had it going and we were stagnant? We were stagnant and then LeMVP HAPPENED!!! The Knicks never recovered.

Knicks can STILL adjust, Melo/Amare can still go off, and Chandler can recover from the flu.

This is not over. It's a great statement Game 1, but it's not over. They have to protect home court on Monday. The Knicks, believe it or not, don't feel bad. Their mission is to win 1 of 2 games on the road. They still have that opportunity.

But I was really glad our benched showed up, the crowd wasn't so full of Knicks fans, Battier was phenomenal too.

But you can tell LeBron just couldn't wait for the post-season after losing in the Finals. ANd he should be since he underperformend and got like 60% of the blame from a lot of people for losing and he knows it (always listens to the media). He came out BLAZIN' HOT!! And never stopped.

the knicks shot horribly - no way do they do that poorly again. But even with this generation's "Big Dog" they don't have a complete team.

It was one game, it was a great game, but just one out of hopefully many to come. I remember the Bulls handing our asses to us in game one of the Conference Finals, just to lose the next four. I'm not gonna get too high on one win or too low on one loss.

As amazing as LeBron was, I almost want to give the MVP of this game to Wade. Wade's energy and hustle was huge. We were missing that out of him in most games in the regular season.

If the team plays with this much energy and intensity, they will not be beat in a 7 game series. Wade was tremendous, LeBron other-worldly.

As others have mentioned its one game. These same posts were cropping up last year after the Celtics and Bulls but before the Mavs

kyphi wrote:the knicks shot horribly - no way do they do that poorly again. But even with this generation's "Big Dog" they don't have a complete team.

It's not like they were missing open Js or layups though...everything was contested, off-the-dribble, late in the shot clock, etc. Miami just overwhelmed them. It was definitely one game, but Miami deserves credit here for the Knicks shooting so poorly. It didn't just happen randomly.

zogster wrote:As amazing as LeBron was, I almost want to give the MVP of this game to Wade. Wade's energy and hustle was huge. We were missing that out of him in most games in the regular season.

If the team plays with this much energy and intensity, they will not be beat in a 7 game series. Wade was tremendous, LeBron other-worldly.

Oh f*** no. He was good defensively, but offensively he was pretty out of it. He started off aggressively, then was very passive in the 2nd quarter and then started forcing it too much in the 2nd half, which led to a couple of very unnecessary turnovers. I agree that his energy was there, but he needs to hit the gym for some jumpers and find his rhythm. The same goes for Bosh by the way. Those long breaks have hurt those guys' rhythms. I'm not too worried about it, but this was LeBron's night.

Knicks shot poorly because of our defense. I've been saying it all season that it's purely effort-based, right?

Our perimeter defense was excellent today. We trapped and recovered the best I've seen in months. If you notice, the Knicks had to kick the ball out high (near halfcourt) a lot to reset their offense, because they were getting the ball stuck on the sides with no entry. We eliminated angles on entry passes very well.

Because of the great ball pressure and tough angles, anytime they managed to get the ball inside, it was either an out of control dribble drive into the help, or a sloppy pass into an out of control cutter. That's where all those charges came from.

So they were forced into some difficult shots. I think most of their paint points came off offensive rebounds or back door cuts when we collapsed. I think we did a great job with the defense. Melo did not get many good looks, and we weren't giving him easy post position. Just a great job on defense.

On offense, we missed a surprising number of bunnies. I predicted a sweep and see no reason to change that. Sure, someone might get hot on their team, but we're not giving them easy looks. It's not like this blowout was a result of them missing open looks. We played great defense. We're a shitton better than this team. PEACE.

I've said it for a while now the Heat aren't showing their cards and that in the playoffs they will when necessary.

Did anyone catch Spoelstra's post game interview were he said the heat have implemented new defensive concepts for the playoffs that differ from our regular season defense.

Mundo wrote:Did anyone catch Spoelstra's post game interview were he said the heat have implemented new defensive concepts for the playoffs that differ from our regular season defense.

Thank God

We played great defense, this series is ours if we want it and however we want it. The defense is so fast it confuses the knicks, everytime we play them it happens. Today it was on overdrive

I'm now worried about us getting bored and cruising to the second round. It looks like the Knicks aren't going to put up much of a fight.

I know there's somewhat a sign of relief that we've appeared to be just coasting but yeah, it's just 1 game. Nothing's guaranteed so let's just take this step by step. One at a time.

I hope the team isn't like the fans and get way too overconfident. Enough confidence is nice, but not too much please.

Mundo wrote:Did anyone catch Spoelstra's post game interview were he said the heat have implemented new defensive concepts for the playoffs that differ from our regular season defense.

that's interesting..what exactly did he say? anyone got a link?

This post seems more appropriate after maybe an entire series, or better, seeing us play this well against multiple teams.

That being said, I maintained back in March that it looked like guys just had dead legs, and that in the playoffs Miami will probably look more like it did in late Jan/Feb (when it was crushing everybody and playing at an incredibly high level) than it did in March/April. One game is not enough to confirm that hypothesis, but its a start!

They didn't just turn it on.

Lebron has been playing good, roleplayers come and go on the Heat they probably suck ass next game, Wade actually played like he gave a damn so that's good, and Spo seemed to actually find a rotation he likes.

RexBoyWonder wrote:

Mundo wrote:Did anyone catch Spoelstra's post game interview were he said the heat have implemented new defensive concepts for the playoffs that differ from our regular season defense.

that's interesting..what exactly did he say? anyone got a link?

Id love a link too. While its great that we might have a new approach it would be foolish to not expect our opponents to adapt and try to exploit it.