Rapaz wrote:▪ TNT’s/NBA TV’s Charles Barkley: “I might break out Kevin Love for two reasons. You’ve got six fouls. He can get hot from three-point range. Joker [Nikola Jokic] has got to guard Kevin out to that three-point line; that might open things up for everybody else.”
Love hasn’t played in the Heat’s past three games.
“Bam Adebayo is so small that he would get in foul trouble if they let him play Joker 1-on-1 all night,” Barkley said. “If they had two or three big guys who could beat the hell out of [Jokic],” that would help.
Barkley said he would play the 6-8 Love alongside 6-9 Adebayo, a starting power rotation tandem that the Heat used from Game 3 of the first round against Milwaukee through Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals against Boston.
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra replaced Love with the 6-5 Caleb Martin to open Games 6 and 7 of the Celtics series because Boston was using a smaller starting group.
And Spoelstra stuck with Martin as a starter in Game 1 against Denver, despite his three-inch height disadvantage against Nuggets power forward Aaron Gordon.
In the wake of the Heat shooting 33 percent on threes (13 for 39) in Game 1 on Thursday, Barkley said: “We’ve been bragging the last two weeks about how great they’ve been shooting threes. [But] when you miss them, you have to have a Plan B. Maybe go to the basket a little more.
“Max Strus is one of my favorite players; he was 0 for 9 [on threes]. He’s not going to have another game like that in his lifetime. I am going to give them a pass [for Game 1] for having a grueling seven-game series [against Boston].
“I don’t think they can beat the Nuggets, but I’m not going to overreact to one game. That series against the Celtics was emotional.”
But Barkley said “the only chance” the Heat has “got is if Tyler Herro comes back sooner than later. You are going to have to score. Herro is a really good 1-on-1 player. I would bring him off the bench with Kyle Lowry. They play a lot faster with Lowry in the game.”
▪ TNT/NBA TV’s Grant Hill: “Jimmy Butler is going to have to take more than 14 shots. You are going to have to have a superhuman performance. Adebayo is not drawing fouls; he’s a jump shooter.”
Hill said the Nuggets were smart in “putting Aaron Gordon on Butler because [Butler] can’t outmuscle [Gordon] in the paint where Butler likes to operate. Miami has got to make changes in how they attack offensively, have to have more diversity.”
▪ TNT/NBA TV’s Shaquille O’Neal: “You need more ball pressure on Jokic. He’s standing out there and picking them apart.”
▪ ESPN’s Tim Legler: “Denver can break you down so simply by giving the ball to one player [Jokic] and let him figure it out. If you want to play him straight up, he’ll shoot over Bam all night long. If you want to send some traffic his way, he will make the right decision and empower his team.”
▪ ESPN’s JJ Redick: “Butler had the least amount of drives he had all season. He’s got to be aggressive the same way he was aggressive in Game 7. If I’m the Heat, I’m taking a page out of what they did against the Knicks in the second round when they relentlessly targeted Jalen Brunson. There is cumulative effect to attacking smaller players. [Miami has] got to [find a way to] get Jamal Murray on Jimmy Butler.”
ESPN’s Jay Williams[, a notorious dumbass]: “Nobody can tell me [that Game 1] didn’t give me that vibe of a JV team versus a varsity team physicality wise.”
https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/barry-jackson/article275725266.html
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