Hollinger on Heat and Magic's chances of making the Finals, a worthwhile read for those (Stoney) who weight games against contenders heavily:
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Ask pundits where the NBA championship will end up this year, and you'll hear a variety of answers. Ask the same gang where the title will NOT end up, however, and you'll get a pretty consistent answer: Florida.
This stands in stark contrast to our playoff odds, which see a 1-in-4 chance of the Larry O'Brien trophy landing in the Sunshine State this season. Yet despite their accomplishments -- Miami is 43-17 and has the league's best scoring margin, while Orlando is 39-22 with nearly as dominant a margin -- the two Florida teams have had an unusual amount of difficulty getting people to believe they're for real.
Thus, today's big question: Are they for real?
Ironically, the same things hurt both teams in their pursuit of ForRealness. For starters, there's history. Miami's lack of it with this group means the huddled masses can't point to their experience, nor to past results with the same core. Orlando's recent history, meanwhile, includes a not-as-close-as-it-looked six-game defeat to Boston in last season's conference finals, when the Magic arguably had a stronger team than this one.
Second, there's the convenient shorthand of the Big Game. Both Miami and Orlando have played poorly in the spotlight, national TV games that everybody watches. The Heat, as we've heard almost constantly throughout the season, are just 3-8 against the league's seven other top teams, and two of those wins came against the equally lightly regarded Magic. The flow of those games, particularly the three against Boston, also hurt Miami -- in each Miami trailed badly before a near-comeback at the end; the fact Boston led each game wire-to-wire resonates with a lot of people.
Orlando's track record against the elite is better than Miami's at 5-7, but its timing has been terrible. The Magic's best performance -- a 107-78 win over the Bulls in Chicago, with the Bulls playing both Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer -- was immediately obliterated in the news cycle by LeBron's return to Cleveland the next night. In the marquee Thursday games, they've lost to Portland, Oklahoma City and Miami; in contrast, their two biggest wins on national TV came on Dec. 23 and Dec. 25, when folks were distracted by the holidays.
I'll give you two other reasons the Heat and Magic are frowned upon as contenders. The first is confirmation bias. When Orlando loses at home to Sacramento, it's a sign they can't be taken seriously as a contender. When the Lakers are blown out at home by the Bucks? Not the same reaction.
Similarly, many take the Heat's 3-8 record against elite teams as further proof that they lack championship mettle -- an easy case to argue since Wade is the only one of the group with a ring. The Lakers' 2-7 mark against the same teams, meanwhile, has received comparatively little scrutiny. (At least, for the Lakers. Everything that happens with the Lakers gets at least some scrutiny.)
Record Against Top Seven Teams
Team Wins Losses
Chicago 8 4
Boston 8 4
San Antonio 6 4
Dallas 7 5
Orlando 5 7
Miami 3 8
Los Angeles 2 7
Additionally, there are big weaknesses one can point to, much more easily than those of Boston or San Antonio. The Heat have no center and until yesterday had no point guard; defensively, they're extremely vulnerable at both positions. Orlando, meanwhile, basically has one good defensive player and no perimeter weapons who can reliably create shots against quality defenses -- the bugaboo that bit them in the playoff loss to Boston a year ago.
But here's the thing: None of that matters. Not one iota. Look for indicators of playoff success, and the items that stand out are regular-season scoring margin, star talent and quality of play heading into the postseason. (I know that last one didn't hold up a year ago, but historically it's rock-solid.)
Performance in spotlight TV Games? A total non-factor.
Won-loss record against elite teams? Meaningless, believe it or not.
Record in close games? Ditto.
Here are the factors that actually matter for the postseason:
1. Miami and Orlando have the three best players in the league. Despite their weaknesses, both teams offset the flaws with strengths no other side can match. Miami's combination of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade is unmatchable. They're the two best perimeter players in the game, and the fact an opponent must account for both stretches most defenses to the limit. Witness the Celtics' acquisition of Jeff Green just to add another perimeter defender, a move that seemed to be made with guarding James and Wade top of mind.
Orlando, meanwhile, has Howard, a wild card because of his ability to overwhelm defenses that lack a huge, physical center. With Howard having refined his post game this season and making a real run at James for the league's PER crown, he's providing a much more broad-based offensive threat to build the Magic attack around. Combine that with noted Howard stopper Kendrick Perkins' departure to the Western Conference, and Orlando has to like its odds in the playoffs.
The reason this matters in the playoffs is a simple one: You can play your stars more minutes in the postseason, given the high stakes and increased time off between games, and thus use the weaker bench players less. If Howard can play 46 minutes a game it doesn't matter if the Magic don't have a backup center, and if James and Wade are on the floor for 45 apiece the Heat's bench shortcomings are similarly masked.
They've won in the playoffs before. James, Wade and Howard account for three of the past five Eastern Conference championships. We're really saying they can't be factors? While Boston has the trump card of knocking off all three in succession in last season's playoffs, the Celtics couldn't get past Orlando the year before and barely beat a much weaker LeBron-led Cleveland team in the second round in their 2008 title run.
Orlando, in particular, has seen its playoff success dismissed far too often. Only one team has won more series over the past two years -- the Lakers, obviously. Orlando has won five playoff rounds in the past two seasons, which is one more than Boston, not to mention four more than San Antonio or Dallas, and five more than Chicago or Miami.
Scoring margin. The best predictor of future success is scoring margin. Miami's plus-7.6 mark is tops in the league, and Orlando's plus-6.0 is within a point of all the other contenders getting much more ink. Both those marks look even better if you consider recent play, which as I mentioned above is another major factor in playoff success. The Heat are 34-9 since a wobbly first month and haven't lost by more than six points in a game James played in since Nov. 27. The Magic, meanwhile, have 10 double-digit wins in their last 19 outings. Take that in for a second -- they'd be 10-9 in their last 19 even if they spotted the other team 10 points.
In summary, none of this means the Magic or Heat are necessarily destined to win the title. Some of the weaknesses enumerated above may eventually come back to bite them -- in particular, I don't like how Miami's offense matches up against Boston's defensive style, and any team that can put fouls on Howard has a great shot of beating Orlando.
Nonetheless, I think their odds are at least as good as anyone else's, including Boston and L.A. We'll get another national TV test tonight when the Florida teams play each other, and we can be sure that the loser will find itself immediately dismissed nationally. It could be a recurring theme in the Heat's case -- Miami plays 10 straight games against winning teams before a final lap through the league's doormats in April.
Somehow, however, the idea that both teams are fatally flawed has gained tremendous traction. Between the inability of the teams' history to provide a counterargument, the lure of overreacting to national TV games, and the failure to understand that records in close games and records against good teams are both meaningless predictors of playoff success, the two Florida teams are held in far less regard than they should be. Come May, that position may need reconsidering.
