Odds are against Heat in coming back from 3-1
Miami needs to improve free throws, rebounding, 4th-quarter execution.
The only time Miami came back from a deficit like that in the playoffs was 1997, but they’ll have to tonight against Sixers.
MIAMI - Only 11 teams in NBA history have overcome a 3-1 deficit to win a playoff series.
This is the position the Heat find themselves in entering tonight’s Game 5 in Philadelphia. The Sixers lead the first-round series 3-1 after winning Games 3 and 4 in Miami.
“Human nature, any guy that’s down 3-0, 3-1, human nature is for you to doubt,” Heat guard Dwyane Wade said after Monday’s prac
tice. “That’s going to be human nature. Anybody that says they don’t doubt, they’re lying. It’s going to be a moment of doubt, a second of doubt. But you get over it. You understand that you still have life, you still have another opportunity.”
History reveals that Miami hasn’t taken advantage of this opportunity many times.
The Heat have found themselves
down 3-1 in a playoff series four times in team history, and the only time they rallied was when they won the final three games to knock out the Knicks in the 1997 Eastern Conference semifinals. The Heat were eliminated in five games the other three times they found themselves in this position.
“It was tough after the last one, going home (Sunday) and sitting around down 3-1,” Wade said. “But today we come back here, we learn from our mistakes and now we’re prepared to play another game. With this group of guys, I definitely feel comfortable and confident that we’re going to go out there and play hard. They’re too stubborn to even know they’re down 3-1.”
Miami definitely has to be better in three areas — free throws, rebounding and fourth-quarter execution.
The Heat made just 13 of 25 free throws in Saturday’s Game 4 loss. Miami has missed out on 37 total points and is shooting 69.4 percent at the foul line in the series, a percentage that would have ranked last in the league in the regular season.
The Sixers have taken advantage of their elite rebounding, too. Philadelphia, which ended the regular season as the top rebounding team in the league, has a decisive 197-165 edge on the glass and a 57-38 edge in offensive rebounds in the series. The Sixers have used this advantage to outscore the Heat 69-29 in second-chance points.
“You have to persevere,” coach Erik Spoelstra said of the Heat’s rebounding issues. “We have to find a way to put bodies on them and finish. We have to find a way to handle the long (rebounds) and anticipate them and see if we can dig out a handful more of those from long 3-point misses.”
But the fourth quarter has been the Heat’s biggest problem in the series. Philadelphia has outscored Miami 127-85 in the final period over the four games, and the Heat have posted a terrible 90.5 offensive rating and 130.6 defensive rating in the fourth quarter during the playoffs.
The past two fourth quarters have been especially bad for the Heat. The Sixers outscored the Heat 32-14 in the final period of Game 3 to turn a two-point lead at the start of the quarter into a 20-point win, and 27-19 in the fourth quarter of Game 4 to complete their comeback from a 12-point deficit.
“They’ve really stepped up their defense with their activity, their length and we have to be able to execute to detail and we haven’t been able to do that consistently,” Spoelstra said of the Heat’s fourth-quarter struggles. “That’s probably one of
Heat coach
the biggest reasons we were able to hold them off in Game 2. We were able to get some points and get us some breathing room with our execution. But we weren’t able to do that the last couple games.”
Point guard Goran Dragic, who has been one of the Heat’s best players in the playoffs with a team-high average of 19.5 points on 49.2 percent shooting in the series, hasn’t been effective late in games. Dragic has scored just eight points on 3-of-11 shooting in 36 fourth-quarter minutes, in part because the Sixers have blitzed him to get the ball out of his hands down the stretch of games.
“Forcing it is not the right thing to do,” Dragic said. “You need to do some other things, try to steal the ball, try to play good defense, try to be effective. At the end of the day if they blitz me, I did my job. I got two guys on me, I’ve got to get rid of the ball and I’m doing that. What else can I do?”
The Heat have to find an answer to these problems tonight to force a Game 6.