For some people, April does not just bring May flowers, it also brings four teams, built with talent, experience and severe hunger for winning to the NBA Conference Finals.
This year the teams who have survived include the Chicago Bulls and the Miami Heat who are in a defensive showdown on the East Coast along with the Dallas Mavericks in an offensive matchup with the Oklahoma City Thunder on the West.
If you look at the series statistics the first thing you would probably notice is they look identical: 2-1. Take a deeper look, however, and you will see two vastly different series.
On the East Coast, Chicago handed Miami a 103-85 first-game smack down with shutdown defense that held Dwayne Wade and LeBron James to a combined 33 points and making Chris Bosh’s stellar 30-point effort irrelevant while Derrick Rose and Luo Deng put up a combined 49 points for the win.
Games two and three, however, were completely different. In Game three, the Big Three of Wade, Bosh and James turned in 63 of the team’s 85 points with an additional 13 coming from Udonis Haslem, meanwhile keeping Rose to 21 points, despite the Bulls’ lack of help for Rose.
With that, they clinched the needed road game to give them the upper hand in the series.
Despite 26 points from Carlos Boozer in Game 4, the Bulls needed more than 20 points from Rose as they fell to the Heat in Miami. Much like the previous game, the Big Three put up 73 of the Heat’s 96 points to put them on top of the Bulls 2-1.
In the West, the Mavericks took Game 1 at home with a 121-111 win over the Thunder. Dirk Nowitzki posted 48 points, backed up by a combined 43 from Jason Terry and J.J. Barea.
In Game 2, the Thunder also snatched a road game with 47 points from Kevin Durant and James Harden to boost them to a 106-100 victory. Nowitzki turned in 29 points, however help was limited to 39 points between Tyler Chandler, Jason Kidd and Barea.
From here the West splits off from the East in more ways than their style of game. Unlike the Bulls, Dallas pulled off a Game 3 comeback, taking a 93-87 win.
Russell Westbrook led the way for the Mavericks with 30 points as Durant turned in 24, but their next highest was a 9-point effort from Serge Ibaka. On the other hand, a spread out offense by the Mavericks proved to work as Nowitzki and Shawn Marion each put up 18 points while Kidd and Terry each posted 13 points.
Looking ahead, the Heat will try to continuously hold Rose to 20 or less as they swarm him with double teams, but the Bullls will need to get at least one win in Miami and they need not only Rose to step, but for Deng, Noah and Boozer to back him up.
Across the country, if OKC will need another win in Dallas to stay alive, but Dallas has regained home court advantage and will look to use it toward their advantage. No matter the result of these series the finals will feature a strong defense from the East facing off with a powerful offense from the West for what should be a thrilling series that will keep us all on the edges of our couches.
Picks from the Echo office:
Theodora Robinson-Jones: Bulls in 7, Mavericks in 6
Jerime Crane: Heat in 6, Mavericks in 6
