Podcast: It’s Pat Riley vs. LeBron, Bam vs. AD and underdog Heat vs. Lakers in NBA Finals
Pat Riley has been waiting for this moment for more than six years. The Miami Heat is back in the NBA Finals for the first time since LeBron James left for the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2014 offseason, splintering the Big 3 after James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh led the Heat to four straight Finals appearances.
All Riley wanted to do was win another championship without James. He couldn’t have possibly drawn it up so perfectly. Miami is now the ultimate underdog, the lowest seeded team to reach the Finals since 1999. James is now the face of the Los Angeles Lakers, the team Riley guided to four championships as coach in the 1980s.
When James left the Heat for the Cavaliers, Miami always figured it’d have to go through the superstar to reach the Finals. Now it faces him with a championship on the line. On the latest episode of the Heat Check podcast, David Wilson and Anthony Chiang, the Miami Herald’s Heat beat writer, dissect all the storylines surrounding the 2020 NBA Finals, from Riley’s chance at revenge against James to the matchup between All-Star post players Bam Adebayo and Anthony Davis, and the whiplash-inducing flipping narrative around All-Star wing JImmy Butler.
First, Wilson and Chiang are joined by the Associated Press’ Tim Reynolds, who is inside the 2020 NBA Bubble in Lake Buena Vista and brings us some scenes from Miami’s win against the Boston Celtics in the NBA Conference Finals. There was jubilation from first-time finalists like forwards Jae Crowder and Kelly Olynyk, but it was offset by the enduring stoicism of veterans like coach Erik Spoelstra and power forward Udonis Haslem.
Reynolds also offers up a prediction for the series before ditching Wilson and Chiang to talk to Kentucky Wildcats coach John Calipari.
Wilson and Chiang then dive into the latest evolution of Adebayo, and what it means for this Finals series and the Heat moving forward. Chiang offers up some insights from Wade and senior advisor of basketball operations Chet Kammerer, who scouted Adebayo, about the 23-year-old’s transformation into one of the most dangerous playmakers in the NBA. Still, no one could have seen what was coming in the fourth quarter of Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals Sunday at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, when Adebayo took over as an isolation scorer to rally Miami for a 125-113 win. We got a new glimpse of Adebayo’s ceiling and it looked quite a bit like Giannis Antetokounmpo.
We wrap things up with a more standard preview and some predictions. The Lakers almost definitely have the two players in the series, but the question of how many Heat players are better than Los Angeles’ third option could determine this series in Walt Disney World.
