2011-'14 Heat: Replace Lebron w/ '19-'22 Giannis

[Lou Fan]

I am not sure he wins any, 19 giannis got walled off in a similar way by toronto as lebron with dallas

I think his monster defense may tilt 2011 to heat but i dont think he wins 2012 and 2013

Who beats them in 2012? The Thunder? Thunder weren't exactly a great team.

The thunder were a great team

Both boston and thunder could beat them

Boston could not beat them or at least that would be a super embarrassing loss. Boston had no business being in the conference finals let alone taking the Heat 7. If the Bulls had been healthy they definitely beat them I mean **** the 8 seed 76ers took them seven. The Thunder were good but Durant would get even more physically bullied by Giannis than LeBron. Durant was still underweight in 2012. Plus Giannis gives them the rim protection they lacked and turns them from an average defense to a good one. Giannis-Bosh-Battier-Wade-Chalmers is still a damn good lineup don't see OKC beating them. In a tougher year this team might not get it done but 12 was probably the easiest strength of competition to a title in the 10s.

[MyUniBroDavis]

lebron's shot well below league average in the games that weren't blowouts vs bnoth the pacers and the spurs. Not to mention lebron was outright bad defensively. Idk if the heat win with giannis, but i'm pretty sure they do better

Pretty sure his defense picked up post all star and in the playoffs

miami's defense got cooked by the 23rd and 14th best offenses in the league in the playoffs. Nvm what happened to them vs the spurs

Aside from the Spurs who just went supernova I’m fairly sure that had to do more with how bad their defense was with lebron off the court

[falcolombardi]

Who beats them in 2012? The Thunder? Thunder weren't exactly a great team.

The thunder were a great team

Both boston and thunder could beat them

Boston could not beat them or at least that would be a super embarrassing loss. Boston had no business being in the conference finals let alone taking the Heat 7. If the Bulls had been healthy they definitely beat them I mean **** the 8 seed 76ers took them seven. The Thunder were good but Durant would get even more physically bullied by Giannis than LeBron. Durant was still underweight in 2012. Plus Giannis gives them the rim protection they lacked and turns them from an average defense to a good one. Giannis-Bosh-Battier-Wade-Chalmers is still a damn good lineup don't see OKC beating them. In a tougher year this team might not get it done but 12 was probably the easiest strength of competition to a title in the 10s.

The 2012 boston was in thepry a underwhelming rival but so was the 2020 heat before they played bucks and look at what happened to giannis team there

Hell the 2014 spurs almost lost to 8th seed dallas and nobody would call them weak competition

Lebron needed one of his best overall series to pull it off, a giannis vs 2020 heat performance and the heat is toast even with the defense inprovement

Bosh being hurt and missing games didnt help either

Also okc gets ubderated just because they lost ub 5 when all first 4 games came down to the wire, they beat the same spurs team that would prove how hood theh were in 2013 and went on to play a +9 srs pace the next season.a lot of peopke foeget oklahoma was everyone favorite to win those finals

They are more talented overall than the heat with giannis over lebron and perkins woukd matchup a lot better against this version of heat

[TheGOATRises007]

0.

I really think we'd beat the Heat if they had Giannis in 2011. Their blitzing defense which really stifled Rose and exposed our lack of a good 2nd ball handler is out the window if Giannis replaces LeBron.

[uberhikari]

Lebron in the 2014 finals averaged 28 ppg on 68 ts%, with 3/4 losses coming with massive margins. That’s like the one series where they’d really have no shot whatsoever.

lebron's shot well below league average in the games that weren't blowouts vs bnoth the pacers and the spurs. Not to mention lebron was outright bad defensively. Idk if the heat win with giannis, but i'm pretty sure they do better

In the 2014 playoffs, LeBron had 2 games of 53 TS% and 1 game below that. I have no idea where you're getting your stats from but they're wrong.

[Cavsfansince84]

Voted 0 even though 1 or even 2 might be possible but I highly doubt it. Part of this is that Giannis in 11-14 is not going to be allowed to play quite the way he has the last 4 years he won't have quite the same spacing while facing tougher defenses in general than he is used to. The Heat went up against some very good defensive teams with good rim protection.

[letskissbro]

Giannis would just exacerbate the fit issues of the original big 3. The Raptors/Heat were walling Giannis off from the paint with the Bucks playing 5-out with a volume 3-point shooting center and taking more 3s than basically any team ever. Bledsoe's man sagging off of him was enough to limit his offense on its own. On the Heat he'd be playing next to Wade, who would get the same exact treatment, and Bosh, who couldn't reliably space the floor out to 3 until 2014.

Giannis would be a massive downgrade offensively and I think it's being overstated how much better they'd be on D. Without Lopez the Bucks were far from an elite defense this year. They wouldn't get the same twin towers effect playing a weak rim protector like Bosh at C.

They win 0 and wouldn't be good enough to make it out of the East most years. The Heat played more elite defenses over that 4 year stretch than almost any team ever and balanced defensive teams with strong rim protectors and forwards at the POA are Giannis' kryptonite.