Former Heat star calls for new Miami game plan. Announcers weigh in and ratings nosedive
The national reaction to the Los Angeles Lakers drubbing the Miami Heat in Game 1 of the NBA Finals included a former Heat star imploring coach Erik Spoelstra to change his game plan, one national analyst suggesting the Heat’s primary goal should be simply avoiding a sweep and another network voice blaming the NBA for not permitting two Western Conference teams in the Finals.
“Rip up that old game plan you had if you’re the Heat, throw it in the trash and move forward,” Bosh said in an appearance on ESPN’s “Get Up.” “They do have size and strength themselves. They will have to reach into their bench, give some minutes to their other bigs [Kelly Olynyk, Meyers Leonard]. That will compromise a little bit of their defense.”
Mark Jackson suggested late in Game 1 that the Heat needs to play its natural big men more, though he didn’t want to push that narrative on an ABC/ESPN conference call on Thursday, saying “Erik Spoelstra doesn’t need my advice. He’s a Hall of Fame coach.”
According to Heat.com’s Couper Moorhead and Second Spectrum, Miami played zone on only three possessions in Game 1 and the Lakers scored five points on those sequences.
TNT’s Kenny Smith and ESPN’s Tim Legler on Thursday suggested that Miami needs to use the zone more.
“I don’t think you can abandon the zone after one game and say we are going to go to [only] man to man,” Smith said. “You’ve got to say we’re doing this because we don’t think you can beat us four times this way.”
Smith said the “shots the Lakers made are the shots you want to give up [including] threes by Rajon Rondo. I just think the rotations were too slow and not athletic enough. You’ve just got to get there faster. And if the Lakers hit [these] shots in Game 2, you might as well start packing your stuff to get ready to get out of the bubble.”
Smith also encouraged Spoelstra to play Derrick Jones Jr. more because of his athleticism at the top of Miami’s zone. Jones played seven minutes in Game 1 after logging a total of 10 seconds of court time in the final three games of the series against the Celtics.
Legler put it this way: “I don’t know how you play this Lakers team without playing zone, and that’s [even] with everybody healthy. That’s the smart way to play them when you’re that thin up front and you have only one guy to offer resistance at the rim.
“You’ve got to protect Bam Adebayo from foul trouble and make sure there are many bodies in front of LeBron James and Anthony Davis as possible. And if the Lakers are going to make three-point shots, you probably don’t deserve to be on the floor with them, because they’re better than every team in the league by a mile if they shoot the ball the way they did [Wednesday] night. You have to try to take something away and at least the zone can make their stars play in a crowd a little bit more effectively. If the Lakers are going to shoot like this from the three-point line, it’s going to be a very short series.”
Legler was “disappointed” that “in the third quarter, the Heat let go of the fight a little bit. You can’t make it that easy on a team that’s going to physically bully you. That’s what the Lakers have done to their opponents in the postseason.”
On national television on Thursday, pessimism prevailed about the Heat’s chances.
“If you’re the Heat, respectfully, you’re trying not to get swept,” ESPN’s Jalen Rose said. “The Heat has the fourth-worst record of any team to make the NBA Finals. The Lakers are just too good.”
ESPN’s Jay Williams said: “It feels like it’s over. I’m not saying it’s over. Watching this, this doesn’t feel like it’s going to be a series.”
Williams said the East doesn’t have a team that could beat the Lakers or Clippers, and the league should have ranked teams 1 to 16 in postseason without conference affiliation factored in. “I don’t think we would have had a blowout in the championship game” in that scenario, he said. But Miami already beat the Bucks, the team that would have been the No. 1 overall seed.
But ABC’s game announcers, Jeff Van Gundy and Jackson, cautioned not to overreact to Game 1. “I look forward to this being a hard-fought battle,” Jackson said.
RATINGS PLUMMET
The percentage of South Florida homes tuning in for Game 1 plunged from the last time the Heat was in the NBA Finals.
For Wednesday’s game, 12.9 percent of Miami-Fort Lauderdale homes with TV sets watched, compared with 30.5 percent for Game 1 of the Heat’s most recent finals appearance in 2014 against San Antonio, according to Nielsen. The lopsided score was a factor on Wednesday, and aside from cable news, fewer people nationally are watching TV in general than earlier last decade.
Viewers who watch the games on streaming services aren’t factored into those numbers, but only about 5,000 people have watched Heat playoff games on average, through streaming services, which is less than one-third of one ratings point.
One ratings point in Miami-Fort Lauderdale equals 16,522 homes.
This much is clear: Heat popularity, at least as reflected in TV viewership, was much higher during the Big 3 era. Consider that the average local Heat rating in those 2014 playoffs was 15.5 for the first round (against Charlotte), 18.9 in the second round (Nets) and 23.4 in the third round (Pacers).
Nationally, Game 1 of Heat-Lakers drew 7.4 million viewers, smallest Finals audience since at least 1994. But it was the most-watched program in prime time and was competing in Los Angeles with a Dodgers playoff game. And it was a blowout, which has a major impact on the rating.
It will be interesting to see how Game 3 of the Finals fares against a 49ers-Eagles game on Sunday. NBA playoff games have been annihilated in six direct competitions with NFL regular-season games during the past three weeks.
Last Sunday night, NBC’s Packers-Saints game was watched by 17.8 million people, while the Heat’s series-clinching Game 6 win against Boston had 3.45 million viewers.
MORE VIEWS
▪ TNT’s Shaquille O’Neal — on an NBA TV Game 1 postgame show with Smith and Isiah Thomas — said: “I expect the Heat to get to the shooters [more quickly] and Bam to play a little better. He was 2 for 7 before he hit his shoulder. Bam is becoming an elite player in this league. I don’t think a lot of people believe the Lakers can shoot 11 for 17 on threes in the first half three more games.”
▪ Thomas cites “the size of the Lakers, the force they’re playing with” as the Heat’s biggest problem.
“You look at rebounding 54-36 in favor of the Lakers [in Game 1]. It’s not the zone; it’s the size of the opponent you’re playing against and the intimidation that opponent plays with.”
Thomas said he doesn’t know if it’s realistic for the Heat to be able to outmuscle the Lakers with the Lakers’ size and brute strength.
“It’s like Kenny and I trying to outphysical Shaq,” Thomas said. “It’s not going to happen.”
▪ I asked Jeff Van Gundy if this is a championship-caliber team or whether Miami needs to add a significant piece.
“You have to say they are a championship-caliber team because they are playing for it,” Van Gundy said. “They are four wins away. Health is a factor going forward. There is roster manipulation happening all the time; you don’t know what’s coming next.
“I have always appreciated their willingness to try to be good as they try to get even better. The five years previous to this season, three of those five years they didn’t make the playoffs. They were in that same period only eight games over .500 in totality, but the effort to win was always there. They were trying to constantly to build a roster that could get them back.
“Just 14 months ago, they looked stuck and they extricated themselves from questionable contracts, got better players. They kept getting better. They had the free agent signing in Jimmy Butler, and that’s how quickly it can change. It’s constant. You’ve never arrived. They need to do what they’re doing.. and keep trying to upgrade as they go along.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2020 at 12:36 PM.
