Preface
After losing to the Mavericks in 2011, the Heat were determined to make a change, Wade relinquished the position of the team's leader, Bosh transitioned to the No. 5 position to work three-point shooting, and James made up for his shortcomings while becoming more mature. In the 2011-2012 season, the Heat finally played their due strength, and they went all the way in the playoffs, easily eliminating the Thunder 4-1 in the finals to win the championship.
In the 2012-2013 season, the Heat, who only defended the title, played absolute dominance in the regular season, ranking first in the league with a record of 66 wins and 16 losses.
However, when people began to expect the Heat to become the second team to play three consecutive championships in the 21st century, their performance once again disappointed the fans, but compared to the objective factors of their underestimation and inexplicable loss of the team's core in 2011, this time they obviously couldn't beat the Spurs, and the only one in the entire series Heat won was a 2-point narrow victory, and the other four games with a minimum point difference of 15 points, it is not too much to say that they were beaten by the Spurs in this round of the series.
So what is the reason why the Heat failed to achieve the hegemony of three consecutive championships? How did the big three play in that round of the finals, and who dragged the team back? Let's find out!
The Spurs played well on both ends of the floor, and the three-point shot was like a hanging
First of all, the biggest reason for the loss must be that the opponent played quite well, and the Spurs in that round of the series can be said to have figured out the Heat thoroughly, and their offensive and defensive arrangements are very targeted. Defensively, the Spurs are tight on the middle and the opponent's breakaway, and they try to push the opponent to the baseline every round and then implement the trap, even if this will make their defense from beyond the three-point line, but this is the trade-off they make on the defensive end, and the Heat's response from the outside does not pose much of a threat to the Spurs.
There is also the fact that the Spurs are mainly defending James' passes, they first send Leonard to defend alone, and then others will also help defend a lot, not to let James find an open teammate, but to force him to make mistakes and force shots. And the Spurs have been quite successful in this regard, and James, a player who is extremely good at tandem and playmaking, averaged only 4 assists per game and 3.8 turnovers in that series.
On the offensive end, the Spurs focused on team basketball, and they had a total of five players in double figures in their series, compared to the Heat's only Big Three who averaged more than 10 points per game. And the three points of the Spurs in this series can be said to be the same as the opening, in that era when everyone didn't pay much attention to the three-pointers, they were able to shoot an average of 11 three-pointers per game in those 5 games, and the shooting rate was as high as 46.6%, it is precisely because of the outside line that the Spurs' offense can run so smoothly, except for G2, they have scored more than 100 points in a single game.
Locker room cohesion has declined, and role players have lost their championship mentality
This aspect has something to do with the mentality of the Heat, and with two consecutive championships, many players are no longer so eager for championships. To put it bluntly, most of the reason these role players play in the league is to make money, but even if they win three consecutive championships, it doesn't make any difference to their value, and they won't be pursuing a higher historical status anyway.
And if a team's heart is not aligned, then it is difficult for them to win the championship, and at that level of the game, many tactics are already understood by each other, so the key is which team's players are more difficult on the field and more rigorous in the execution strategy. In contrast, the Spurs are much more united, considering that they just lost to the Heat in the tiebreaker in 2013, and they returned to the Finals with a revenge mentality, and in the end they also succeeded.
The team's main players have lost, and the core players have been seriously injured
In the past two years, when the Heat won the championship, Battier, Ray Allen, Miller and others have made indelible contributions in the Finals, and in 2014, the Spurs got revenge, and players such as Mills and Green also played at a high level.
In comparison, the bench lineup of the Heat in 2014 was much worse, and Miller, who played in the Finals the year before, left the team for money reasons, which shows that the Heat management was not so eager for the championship at that time. There is also the impact of injuries, Wade, Ray Allen, Battier and others were affected by age and injuries that year, and their competitive state was not as good as the previous year.
The overall performance of the Big Three was average, and Wade and Bosh declined
As the boss of the team, James averaged 28.2 points, 7.8 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals per game in this series, shooting 57.1% from the field and 51.9% from three-point range. However, if you look at James's performance at that time with a higher vision, it is not impossible for him to do better, but then again, after all, his organization at that time was not as good as it was in the later Cavaliers 2.0 and Lakers periods, so after being targeted by opponents, he did his best at that time.
Wade averaged 15.2 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.6 assists and 1.6 steals per game, shooting 43.8% from the field and 33.3% from three-point range, while Bosh averaged 14 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1 assist per game, shooting 54.9% from the field and 38.5% from three-point range. In 2014, Wade was already 31 years old, and the most important thing was that he was already missing a meniscus, and his playing style was easy to make his injury more serious, so he basically couldn't play the core level in the finals that year.
Bosh, for his part, has not been very good at hand-to-hand combat with centers on the inside, and while the improvement in his shooting has given him more scoring tools on the offensive end, he has never been able to ramp up production, especially in the playoffs, when the intensity of the playoffs increases. However, there were no high expectations for Bosh at the time, after all, he did not play very well in the past two championships.