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| Shane Battier has stepped up in Miami's small lineups |
In this column, Windhorst examines the one of the Heat’s main
weaknesses within the context of a Miami victory over the Philadelphia 76ers.
As Miami has elected to utilize smaller lineups in order to take advantage of
their superior athleticism, Miami has struggled playing big.
While this column focuses on the consequences of Miami’s
small-ball lineups, the Heat-76ers game serves as the feature story and
provides evidence for when Miami is at its best and worst. Windhorst briefly recaps
the game as a tale of two halves; in the first half, Miami’s “flying death
machine” was in full force, while in the second half, Miami came out small and barely
squeaked out a win.
When Windhorst describes Miami at its best, he makes it
clear that the Heat are a force to be reckoned with. In the first half, the “flying
death machine” played with energy, urgency, and focus as they ended the half
with a 27 point lead. There was no mention of a lack of playing big until the
second half, where Philadelphia cut Miami’s lead to four and outrebounded the
Heat 35-12 in the final 24 minutes, making the team of superstars look like “a
middle-of-the-pack team fighting to eke out a win.”
In order to make his point, Windhorst uses quotes from
Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem. Both Wade and Haslem described Miami as “not a
big team,” and Windhorst points to Miami’s interior defense and rebounding as
the team’s weaknesses. With the trade
deadline long gone, Windhorst and the Heat both recognize that the team needs
to “play bigger.” Windhorst, when introducing Wade’s quotes, claims that Wade
was trying to do his part by recording ten rebounds, despite only scoring 12
points.
While Windhorst is able to successfully analyze the Heat’s
weaknesses by comparing and contrasting the first and second half of one game
of basketball, Windhorst may place too much blame on the Heat’s inability to “play
big.” While Miami clearly and significantly lost the battle of the boards in
the second half, Windhorst fails to point out that Miami had more turnovers and
scored fewer fast break points than Philadelphia, two categories in which Miami
usually dominates and uses to fuel their “flying death machine.” Regardless,
Windhorst’s use of quotes makes it clear that Miami’s personnel won’t change
and that the team must collectively play bigger in order to play at a
championship level.
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