Dwayne Wade Doesn't Own a Time Machine

Basketball - NBA Finals, Game 1
One game is in the books of the NBA Finals and the Oklahoma City Thunder have taken a 1-0 lead in the best of seven series. This wasn't a huge surprise, anyone paying attention should have expected the Thunder to win last night, after the Heat enduring a grueling seven game series with Boston. The narrative of fatigue fit as the Heat lead by as much as 13 but were visibly drained in the 4th quarter and were simply unable to keep up with the young legs of OKC. Here are some take aways from game one.


LeBron James must guard Kevin Durant

Kevin Durant won round one of the
heavyweight fight of the year

Nothing was more apparent last night than the fact that LeBron James is the only player on the Miami Heat who can contain Kevin Durant. Everyone gave valiant efforts in defending the league's scoring champion, but only Lebron has the size, strength and speed to contain Durant. This is especially true in the fourth quarter. Fatigue was certainly a factor last night, but Durant was blowing past everyone in a red jersey during the entire fourth quarter. I understand the strategy of rotating different players onto Durant to conserve James' energy, but he has to be all over him in the closing moments.

Wade scored 19 points and appeared
off his game

Dwayne Wade doesn't own a time machine
The Dwayne Wade of 2006 is long gone. Of course Wade is still a top-20 player in the league, but he's clearly hiding an injury and trying to play through it (at least he had better be or he is struggling severely). The problem is Wade could very well be the tipping point in this series. LeBron is going to draw tons of defensive attention and Wade is going to have to take advantage; it just doesn't look like he can. Hopefully last night Wade mailed it in for the sake of being as close to 100% as he can be for game two or the Heat could be in serious trouble.

The Thunder were +13 with Nick Collison
on the floor and he was effective in
 pestering the Miami offense 

The Thunder are a far more complete team than the Heat
There was plenty to be impressed with watching Oklahoma City play last night, but the subtle take away is the completeness of the team. Every player that came on to the floor contributed in some capacity (Perkins aside), particularly Thabo Sefolosha and Nick Collison. When you are seeing contributions from those guys you know your team is deep and depth a problem the Miami Heat have and cannot fix.


Chris Bosh must be more involved

Chris Bosh had 10 points and
5 rebounds in 34 minutes of work

It's as simple as that. The time for protecting the third member of the big three from injury is over, he has to play. With DWade so off his game Chris Bosh has to step up in a big way. Miami would be well served to spend some possessions pounding the ball to Bosh low and see if they can't influence OKC's defense to cheat towards the post. If they could accomplish that it would open driving lanes for LeBron and create open jump shots. It's no guarantee that this strategy will work, but it's better than throwing up threes all night long.


What Oklahoma City players are saying today: "They can't stop us! We hurt them too many ways, Wade is hurt and their bench is terrible! We came back from thirteen down and our arena is a madhouse! If we stay focused we could sweep this team!"


What Miami Heat players are saying today: "No excuses for last night, we were up by thirteen. We showed in the first half we can play with them, we just ran out of gas from the travel and the Celtics series. We just have to adjust to their playing style, which is way different from Boston's, and we'll be right back in this."


In case you missed it the official Pritchard Report prediction for this series was Miami in 7 games. The predicted winners broke down this way:
Game 1: Oklahoma City
Game 2: Miami
Game 3: Miami
Game 4: Oklahoma City
Game 5: Miami
Game 6: Oklahoma City
Game 7: Miami


More to come,
XoXo
-Joshua


Links:
ESPN Stats and Score from Game 1
ESPN Finals Central