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Heat/Pistons Conference Finals

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for you more rabid NBA fans, how often does a team play 14 games in 28 days in the playoffs? Unless they take a day off before Game 7 (unlikely given the sunday time slot)... the pistons will have had no break since seeing Michael Redd.
 
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the pistons just can't shoot the ball (I think they are <30% now).

it's pretty obvious to me they have nothing left in the tank.. and are playing an onfire miami.
 
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jwinslow said:
the pistons just can't shoot the ball (I think they are <30% now).

it's pretty obvious to me they have nothing left in the tank.. and are playing an onfire miami.
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Yeah, they've looked pretty awful tonight. With Wade out for awhile, I expected them to step it up, and go on a run. This Pistons team just hasn't looked in sync this series, and they've looked like a completely different team.

I will say that it looks pretty tight, seeing the entire arena in white.
 
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If you are an NBA owner and you want to be sure your team underachieves and talent is squandered, be sure to hire this guy:

flip_saunders.jpg
 
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Dispatch

6/3/06

HEAT 95 PISTONS 78

Heat finishes job against Pistons

O’Neal, Wade help Miami end Detroit’s reign in the East

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Tim Reynolds
ASSOCIATED PRESS

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</IMG> </TD></TR><TR><TD class=credit width=200>WILFREDO LEE ASSOCIATED PRESS </TD></TR><TR><TD class=cutline width=200>Miami’s Dwyane Wade, right, gets tangled up with Detroit’s Antonio McDyess in the first quarter. </TD></TR><TR><TD align=middle>
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</IMG> </TD></TR><TR><TD class=credit width=200>LYNNE SLADKY </TD></TR><TR><TD class=cutline width=200>Detroit’s Rasheed Wallace puts the clamps on Miami’s Shaquille O’Neal during the third quarter. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>


MIAMI — A year ago, the Miami Heat simply wasn’t good enough. Shaquille O’Neal knew it. Dwyane Wade knew it.
So Pat Riley fixed it.
And now, the Heat is headed to the NBA Finals for the first time.
O’Neal had 28 points and 16 rebounds and Wade, who spent part of his day in a hospital battling dehydration and flu-like symptoms, added 14 points as the Heat ended the Detroit Pistons’ two-year reign as Eastern Conference champions with an 95-78 win last night.
"Our guys came tonight and put the hammer down," said Riley, the Heat’s president and coach.
His superstars didn’t have to do it alone. Jason Williams, one of Riley’s prized off-season additions, came up huge with Wade lagging in Game 6, scoring 21 points on 10-of-12 shooting from the field.
The Heat will play either Dallas or Phoenix in the Finals, which start Thursday.
"We know right now, we still have a job ahead of us," said Heat forward James Posey, another newcomer — like Gary Payton and Antoine Walker, two title-starved veterans — brought in last summer by Riley in a quest to surround his big guns with more firepower.
"We’re not going to get too high right now. We’re not going to get too low. Four more wins — that’s the most important thing."
Richard Hamilton had 33 points for Detroit, which finished the regular season with an NBA-best 64-18 record and came in confident after ending Miami’s season here a year ago in Game 7, in part because Wade and O’Neal were battling injury.
Wade clearly wasn’t at his best last night. But O’Neal was. He was 12 of 14 from the field, making sure this chance wouldn’t slip away.
"Miami played great," Hamilton said. "They deserved it."
The Pistons weren’t shy about showing their respect to the new champions of the East.
"I don’t want to make excuses," guard Chauncey Billups said. "They flat-out beat us."
Tayshaun Prince said, "Miami was definitely the better team."
Detroit shot just 33 percent from the field, with Billups going 3 of 14 and Rasheed Wallace 4 of 12. The Pistons were outrebounded 48-39 and let the Heat shoot 56 percent from the floor, despite insisting that defense would be their top priority for Game 6.
"We didn’t play how we play," Pistons coach Flip Saunders said.
Wade was 1 of 6 with four points in the first half. It didn’t matter. O’Neal and Williams more than carried the early scoring load, helping Miami take a 47-36 halftime lead.
"Jason Williams," Wade said, "did an unbelievable job tonight."
O’Neal was 9 of 11 from the field for 19 points in the first half. And Williams, who was 13 of 30 from the floor in the first five games, was 5 of 5 in the half, the last of those a pull-up jumper with 4:14 left in the first half, giving Miami a 38-27 lead.
Detroit closed to 40-33 on two free throws by Hamilton with 2:52 left, but O’Neal scored six straight Miami points in an 8-3 run by the Heat.
The Pistons closed to 10 midway through the third quarter before Wade finally started to roll. He had 10 points in the quarter, hitting his last four shots — including a jumper with a second left for a 72-53 lead.
"I just wanted to help my teammates," Wade said. "And God gave me the strength." Hamilton and the Pistons made one final run; his jumper with 6:24 left pulled Detroit to 80-67. He had a steal 17 seconds later, but O’Neal blocked his layup and then dunked at the other end.
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Dispatch

6/4/06

NBA PLAYOFFS

O’Neal in position to deliver on pledge

Miami stands just four victories from its first NBA championship

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Tim Reynolds
ASSOCIATED PRESS

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</IMG> </TD></TR><TR><TD class=credit width=200>JULIAN H . GONZALEZ DETROIT FREE PRESS </TD></TR><TR><TD class=cutline width=200>Shaquille O’Neal of the Heat knocks Richard Hamilton of the Pistons to the floor while going to the basket Friday night. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>


MIAMI — Dwyane Wade was in the hospital, and Shaunie O’Neal was rightly concerned.
The biggest game of the Miami Heat’s season — maybe the biggest in franchise history — was only hours away. Wade, the team’s leading scorer, had IVs pumping fluids into his body, the Detroit Pistons’ confidence was growing by the second and memories of Miami’s missed chance in 2005 crept into her head.
With a kiss, her husband assured her everything would be fine.
"It’s done," Shaquille O’Neal told his wife. Sure enough, his dominant 28-point, 16-rebound, five-block effort fueled Miami’s 95-78 win over the Pistons on Friday and carried the Heat to the NBA’s championship round for the first time.
Looking every bit like a threetime MVP of the NBA finals, O’Neal promised his team before the sixth game of the Eastern Conference title series that if he got the ball, good things would happen.
That promise was kept, as O’Neal controlled the game throughout, hitting 12 of his 14 shots.
Now, he’s four wins from keeping another promise — the one he made at his welcome party two summers ago, when he told thousands of Heat fans he would bring a championship to Miami.
"We’ve just got to keep hope alive," O’Neal said. "We don’t want to just get to the finals. We want to win the whole thing. ... Now we have the opportunity to do that."
And Heat center Alonzo Mourning, a longtime adversary before becoming O’Neal’s teammate and eventual close friend, said Miami intends to ride Shaq’s shoulders to that title.
"We went into the season, we started this season, with one goal and that’s a championship goal," said Mourning, a 13-year veteran headed to his first finals. "Not an Eastern Conference goal. A championship goal."
The work resumes today. Miami took yesterday off to rest from the Detroit series, giving Wade another day to battle the flulike virus that ravaged him so badly Friday that he spent seven hours in a south Florida hospital getting treatment.
The Heat is expected to practice at home through Tuesday, then fly to whichever West city — Dallas or Phoenix — emerges as that conference’s champion. The finals start out West on Thursday night.
"We’ve had a lot of near misses, unlucky bounces, suspensions," Heat coach Pat Riley said. "We’ve had very good teams that I thought were championship contenders. ... But ever since Shaquille O’Neal showed up on the scene, this team has been a legitimate contender, and we have put pieces around him."
With Wade hurting, those pieces came through Friday in fine fashion. And while Riley gets much of the credit for making those moves, many of them probably couldn’t have happened without a major O’Neal sacrifice.
He could have made $30.6 million this season, and commanded more in a long-term deal with the Heat. Instead, he opted out of his existing contract, agreeing to play for $20 million per year for five seasons — and freeing payroll room for Miami to start dealing.
"Shaquille can name his price," his agent, Perry Rogers, said at the time. "And the price he named was winning."
So now, O’Neal gets his chance at a fourth ring. "I said it about six years ago," O’Neal said. "When I started getting older, I wanted my legacy to be about winning championships. ... It’s not over. We’ve still got a lot of work to do."
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