The Miami Heat will host the Indiana Pacers Friday night in a game that will likely determine who finishes the regular season with the number one seed in the Eastern Conference.
It has been a long, strenuous, and often confusing journey for these two teams, but it will all come full circle tonight in Miami.
Win and earn the right to host Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals, a game Miami defeated Indiana in last year on their way to a second straight NBA championship.
Friday’s game will be no different than the rest of this regular season, though. It has been announced that Pacers coach Frank Vogel has elected to play his starters, a game after benching them entirely against Milwaukee. The Pacers are clearly invested in accomplishing the goal they started the season with: finish number one in the East.
After not practicing on Monday and Tuesday and not playing against the Bucks, the Pacers starting five has enjoyed their most rest since the All-Star break. You can bet they will be looking to right the ship that is halfway under water right now.
Miami, on the other hand, is taking a more relaxed approach. Eric Spoelstra has decided to sit Dwyane Wade again, his ninth consecutive game on the bench. Greg Oden, brought in to be a Roy Hibbert stopper, will also sit against the Pacers on Friday. Oh, and Chris Anderson is a game time decision. The next time the Heat play at full strength against the Pacers will be in the Eastern Conference Finals, if they are both fortunate enough to make it that far. Here’s more from ESPN’s Brian Windhorst:
Wade hurt his left hamstring in the fourth quarter of the Pacers’ 84-83 win over the Heat on March 26. It appears there’s a good chance Wade will miss the rest of the regular season.
“Look at the history of hamstring injuries in the league, things can look good and then you have a setback,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We’re going to take our time.”
With Wade and several other key role players out of the lineup again, LeBron will be forced to carry the load in a game the Heat would be best served to win. Or at least try to win.
At the end of the day the Heat will enter the playoffs with confidence either way. They are the two time defending champions. They have the league’s best player. And nobody has proven capable of knocking them off. What’s most important is that Dwyane Wade is healthy in the playoffs, because if he continues to miss time when the games really count, then LeBron might become even more disgruntled, as has been reported by Windhorst:
This was while James was dragging the Heat on his back with a 37-point performance asDwyane Wade sat out his 27th game of the season and Chris Bosh contributed a grand total of three points. The Heat lost to the Memphis Grizzlies and fell behind the Indiana Pacers for the top record in the Eastern Conference.
Over the past 10 games, eight of which Wade has missed with a hamstring injury, James has averaged 29 points, seven rebounds and six assists. In the past five games he’s averaging 31 points but also 40 minutes, something he hoped to avoid as the playoffs approach.
With the Pacers playing poorer every week, LeBron may have just enough in the tank to push the Heat past them at home. Indy is just 2-5 since beating Miami by one point in Indianapolis just two weeks ago, a win they thought assured them control of the number one seed.
The Pacers will be at full strength on Friday, though. And LeBron will have to do it all himself.
That could prove to be the difference in who hosts a potential Game 7 of the Conference Finals.
And who wins it.
Onto more from around the NBA
Warriors owner Joe Lacob believes they have to win a championship: ““I’m 58 years old now, and I’ve been successful. I’ve made a lot of money. I’ve done a lot of things I’ve wanted to do in life, but now we have this new venture, which is the Warriors. A second career, if you will, and all I can think about it is, we have to win a championship. I will be a failure. We will be a failure if we do not win the championship. So that’s what drives me. We promised a lot of people things. We brought in (president and chief operation officer) Rick Welts and all these people you might have met tonight that are tremendous at their jobs. They are incredible. They are so good, and we are all driven the same way. We are completely connected. We are focused. We are driven as a unit, as we. Because that’s really what it’s about. It’s not one person. It’s not me. It’s we. You get things done with other people. That’s how you succeed. And we are driven together to bring this thing home to the Bay Area.””
Carmelo Anthony has what is being described as a dead arm: “Anthony has remained adamant about playing through the injury, saying it doesn’t matter what the tests say, he’s not missing games. But at the same time, the Knicks’ playoffs hopes are basically on life support, so you have to wonder if the team is chancing making the injury worse for the long-term. Via the WSJ, Anthony has shot just 3-15 on open shots the past two games, both of which ended in Knicks losses. In the two games, Anthony scored a total of just 23 points on 9-31 shooting. Something clearly isn’t right. “Only Melo knows the severity of his pain,” Mike Woodson told reporters. “If he tells me he’s hurt, and that he can’t play, it’s my job to sit him. But I don’t know that he would ever tell me that.” It’s not a rule that the team has to announce an MRI, so it’s possible the Knicks performed one on Anthony and just didn’t say so. Either way, he’s in obvious discomfort and battling through a difficult injury, probably for no reason.”
Iowa State is doing everything they can to keep head coach Fred Hoiberg, a popular NBA coaching candidate: “The Iowa State men’s basketball coach agreed to new terms with the school this week that will raise his annual compensation through the life of his contract to $2.6 million, the school announced Friday. “I’d love to end my career here,” Hoiberg said in a phone interview with the Ames Tribune. “I’ve got something special in Ames. My kids get to see their grandparents every day if they want to and that’s stuff you can’t replace. To look up in the crowd (during games) and there’s my parents, my in-laws, my brother, my sister-in-law, my other brother drives over from Omaha a lot, just to have that family support, you can’t replace that. “I’m very happy here. My kids love it. I’d love to spend the rest of my career here.””
Serge Ibaka is putting a price on his shot blocking abilities: “The Thunder’s defensive whiz is pledging $500 for every shot he blocks in the NBA Playoffs, with the money going to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The Thunder is celebrating UNICEF Night tonight against the New Orleans Pelicans to raise awareness for UNICEF’s efforts in the Congo and to raise funds for the UNICEF Gets Boys and Girls in the Game project.”
The Boston Celtics are hoping to put together a big and successful offseason: “Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck suggested last month that the Celtics had potential for fireworks this offseason given Boston’s pile of assets (draft picks, tradable contracts, trade exceptions) and Ainge has said he hopes the team can light up the summer sky with moves to restore Boston to contender status. “I’m going to try to blow off some fireworks, but I have to be patient as well and we have to make sure that we don’t do deals just to do deals,” Ainge said Thursday during his weekly call to Boston sports radio 98.5 the Sports Hub. “We have to do the right deals. Those are a lot harder than most people think or believe or understand. I’m not making any promises, we have a busy summer ahead of us, and there’s a lot of different directions we could go.” The Celtics were quiet at the February trade deadline, but Ainge noted how the team did much of its work a month earlier with two swaps. Even still, he said those conversations in February, while they didn’t bear any additional deals, might have helped lay the groundwork for what’s possible in June or July. “I think that the the groundwork has been laid, potentially for some deals this summer. But no guarantees,” said Ainge. Asked what the areas of need were for his team, Ainge added: “We need quality players. I would just say, one of our weaknesses has been a closer and rim protection — those have been two of our weaker spots in the course of this year. But, listen, I’ve seen a lot of teams react and fill those needs at the expense of something else. It’s just not that easy that you can go find those weaknesses, or we’d obviously have them. A closer is obviously a really really hard to find.””
Russell Westbrook believes his time off with injury helped him: “”For anybody who gets hurt, you come back with a bigger shovel,” Westbrook said. “You want to compete, come back better and compete at the level before you got hurt. “It’s made me even more meaner. But that’s normal for me.” Westbrook never missed a game during his first five NBA seasons. He quickly built a reputation as one of the NBA’s most confident scorers despite playing alongside Kevin Durant. Westbrook was often criticized for being too offensive-minded as a point guard, but he also often said he didn’t care what his critics thought. Knee injuries eventually forced Westbrook to the sideline, the first of which knocked him out of last season’s playoffs. He’s had three procedures on his right knee since the initial injury. Sidelined for 35 games this season, he has been forced to watch the Thunder mostly succeed without him. He said that’s helped him learn what style of play is best for him and the team. He now has a better understanding of when and where to get his teammates the ball.”I learned different things about my teammates,” Westbrook said. “I learned how they react. I learned the game more from sitting on the sidelines. I saw different things as a point guard that are good things to know.””
Ben Baroff is a basketball journalist who blogs for SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter here.