SideshowBob wrote:Wade was playing injured in the 2013 postseason if I remember correctly (even missed a game). His relentless off-ball cutting/curling action during the regular season was a HUGE part of Miami's offensive explosion (they were running a +10 offense from mid-January onwards), and it provided spacing despite his lack of a 3pt shot. After Lebron's improvements in that offseason, Wade's role was probably the 2nd or 3rd biggest factor in driving that offense (collective team 3pt shooting would be the other) The Lebron/Battier/Wade unit was nuclear, they were a net +30 in that stretch and that included an ORTG of 134.4.
Wade playing injured hampered his ability to play that role in the playoffs, and with teams focusing their entire defensive gameplan to prevent Lebron from getting into the lane (with the exception of Indiana, who were comfortable straight manning him up), Miami's spacing was **** up throughout that run, particularly when Lebron/Wade shared the court (unsurprisingly, Lebron's late run in game 6 vs. SAS came when Wade was on the bench and Lebron was surrounded with shooters; Wade's man could no longer cheat off him to help shade/clog the lane, and James was able to parade to the rim).
Check out Lebron's numbers from the Milwaukee and Chicago series, they're relatively underwhelming as well, because they played him the same way. This isn't necessarily bad, because for the most part James was able to take advantage of Miami's plethora of shooters and avoid taking the jumpshots himself. However, quite obviously, San Antonio was best equipped to employ this strategy while not yielding too much on the shooters (particularly when Wade was on the court as well), and thus Lebron not taking those outside shots became a problem (at least until he did started taking them in game 4) and furthermore, were also comfortably the best offensive team Miami ran into, which amplified the problem and lengthened the series.
Pretty much and the only two games where both James/Wade made their open jumpers were games 4 and 7. Game 4 was a blowout for Miami and game 7 was close until the end. LeBron did not or rather was not able to drive to the rim in game 7 like he did for that stretch in game 6 because Miami stuck with Wade and LeBron in that game. LeBron played 45 and Wade played 38 minutes. Most of LeBron's points (including the one that sealed the game) in game 7 came from making his jumpers, not from driving to the rim because the Spurs were packing the paint in that game as well.
