“Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler went off for 40 points in 36 minutes of play on Monday against the Milwaukee Bucks, securing his team a Game 1 victory in the second round of the NBA playoffs.

He became only the third-ever member of the Heat to drop 40 in a playoff game, putting him in excellent company amidst former Heatles LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, and made headlines after disclosing he didn’t invite any family to the NBA bubble, calling it strictly a “business trip.”

(Virgos will Virgo.)

But despite Butler’s dominating offense and strong work ethic both being a thing of beauty, they aren’t the sole reason that Miami came out on top.

New best friend Goran Dragic scored 27 flashy points of his own, shooting a whopping 60 percent from the field (including 40 percent from downtown) and knocking down all seven of his free throws. He also grabbed six rebounds and dished out five assists, hitting everyone with a friendly reminder of what it truly means to be a well-rounded point guard.

Bam Adebayo also carried his weight (all 250-plus lbs of it and then some), collecting an impressive 17 rebounds, alongside 12 points, six assists and two steals. And perhaps even more importantly, he held Giannis Antetokounmpo to 18 points and 10 rebounds – a modest statline for the former MVP.”

“Almost one calendar year after the 2019-20 NBA season began, the NBA Finals are about to begin between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat. It’s been a long, grinding, tumultuous season with the deaths of Kobe Bryant and former commissioner David Stern, and an all-time footnote in the form of a four-and-a-half month hiatus brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.

The NBA had to get creative to even consider resuming its season, and it did indeed think outside the box in order to do so. As we know now, the league created a bubble environment in Walt Disney World’s Wide World of Sports, and thanks to vigorous testing and quarantining had a perfect record with no positive tests on campus.

The league pulled off something that seemed impossible back in the middle of March when they suspended the season, and along the way provided some incredible basketball. The Phoenix Suns were the seeding game champions with a perfect 8-0 record but were eliminated from playoff contention in the final game of the round.

Performances by Jamal Murray and Donovan Mitchell in a seven-game first-round battle between the Denver Nuggets and the Utah Jazz were nothing short of spectacular, and the Miami Heat’s stifling zone defense clamped down on the Milwaukee Bucks and the Boston Celtics en route to the Finals, while Anthony Davis had a fantastic scoring run for the Lakers.

Not to be left unmentioned, LeBron James had a vintage Game 5 against the Denver Nuggets to clinch things, reminding us that there’s still nobody like LeBron when he has a team on the ropes in the NBA playoffs.

The Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat are not the matchup we expected when the season began, or even when the seeding games or the playoffs began. The Lakers were never worse than the second-most likely team from the Western Conference to get here, but the Heat astonished everybody to get to the Finals.”Golden State Warriors Face Masks

“The Miami Heat swept the Indiana Pacers 4-0 in the first round of the NBA playoffs, leaving the Pacers searching for answers.
Before the playoffs began, all the NBA playoffs matchups were laid out and the Indiana Pacers vs Miami Heat series seemed to be on the top of the list as the evenest matchup along with the Jazz-Nuggets series. It turns out that Pacers vs Heat wasn’t anything like the series between Denver and Utah who went to a crunching Game 7 and ultimately Denver came out on top. In four games, the Miami Heat had swept their competition and it was a shock.

The shock wasn’t so much at Miami’s success as it was at Indiana’s failure. The Heat looked to be serious contenders in the East when they almost beat the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA bubble seeding games until Milwaukee climbed back from their 20-point deficit. Likewise, we watched the Pacers all season and were impressed with how they played.

They even finished ahead of the Heat in the regular season in the fourth and the Heat being the fifth. The Pacers finished the season at 45-28 and the Heat 44-29. So, they were pretty even – very even – at least during the regular season, but this wasn’t the case in the playoffs.

The entire series was cringe-worthy. As we take a look at each game one-by-one, the Heat managed to come out the winner and the Pacers sat dazed and confused on how to approach their competition. It is not easy to see how this happened, but it is worth taking an analytical look at the series now that it is over. The expectations for the Pacers, to say the least, had dropped drastically by the end of it all.” Los Angeles Lakers Face Masks

“As the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers face off in the second round of the NBA playoffs, here is a full breakdown of the series.”

“James Harden and Russell Westbrook versus LeBron James and Anthony Davis. Small-ball versus a group of giants. Two high-scoring offenses and two of the league’s top 10 defenses. This NBA playoffs matchup in the second round between the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers has everything an NBA fan could ask for.

While this series between the Rockets and Lakers is sure to provide tons of excitement, the two teams had very different experiences in the first round.

After losing Game 1 to the Portland Trail Blazers many people thought the Lakers might be in trouble, including Charles Barkley who said they would get swept. But James and Davis had other plans. The duo took over the series, putting up incredible numbers, to help the Lakers win the next four games and make quick work of Portland.

On the other hand, it appeared as if the Rockets would cruise past the OKC Thunder after they got out to a 2-0 series lead. But things quickly changed and OKC pushed Houston to the brink of elimination, forcing a Game 7 in which the Rockets needed every single second of to come out on top.

The two different paths the Lakers and Rockets took to get to this point makes this series even more intriguing. The Lakers are fully rested but also have gone six days without playing a game that could hurt them. Meanwhile, the Rockets are still gassed from their first-round series but the fact that the series went seven could serve as a benefit because it let Westbrook get his legs back under him after missing four straight games.

This is just one of the many storylines to follow during this series. Continue reading to for a breakdown of a key matchup, key questions, and predictions for this second-round series”

“The Milwaukee Bucks have revolutionized the way defense is played in the NBA. They take away the rim and force opponents to get the bulk of their offense from the mid-range and behind the 3-point line. They had the NBA’s best defense in the regular season, but surrendered a massive number of 3s along the way to the tune of 37.1 per 100 possessions. As it happens, their second-round matchup in the NBA playoffs, the Miami Heat, might be the best-crafted team to derail their quest to the Finals.

The Heat were just seventh in 3-point attempts, putting up just 35.4 per 100 possessions, but they were prolific in efficiency. They shot 37.9 percent from behind the arc, behind only the Utah Jazz and their 38.0 percent.

In the NBA, scheme matters, but personnel still gets the job done. For the Miami Heat, they’ve definitely got the personnel, and as Hassan Whiteside would say, they’ve got shooters.

The Heat have four players shooting over 40.0 percent from 3-point range, led by Duncan Robinson at 44.6 percent (on an incredible 8.3 attempts per game), Jae Crowder at 44.5 percent (since coming over at the trade deadline from the Memphis Grizzlies), Meyers Leonard at 41.4 percent and Kelly Olynyk at 40.6 percent.

Just outside this most elite of classes are Tyler Herro at 38.9 percent and Goran Dragic at 36.7 percent, and streaky scoring rookie Kendrick Nunn who can fill it up with a volume approach at 35.0 percent.”NFL Face Coverings