Smashed!

This is it, boys and girls! Elimination game next! Put your best player forward.

How about Game 4? Same banana as Game 3. Another poor showing for the Heat players. It's like the producer of this series decided to split the the third movie into two and shot them back-to-back. Game 4 was every bit as Game 3 was. Spurs built lead in first half, Heat rallies in the third, and then out of gas in the fourth.


Noone in the Finals have gone down 1-3 and won. Under normal circumstances (like Rounds 1 to 3), that would spell a death sentence. Players would be feeling hopeless and might not give their all in the elimination game so as to stay away from injury, especially those who would-be free agents (yes, even those with opt-outs).

But this is the Miami Heat. They still are a resilient bunch and will be super-to-the-megamax motivated to win Game 5 at San Antonio, however hard that may be. They know they need that Game 5 win to give them a chance to play Game 6 at home and force a Game 7.

However, the Spurs know this too. They cannot afford to not deliver the finishing move [cue in your favorite Mortal Kombat finishing move here]. They have seen it in Game 6 of last year. They will make sure it will never happen again.

And so, the Heat in Game 4 did not make any lineup adjustments. LeBron James in the post game interviews didn't directly say it, but I felt the coaching staff needs to do their duty to put the best possible guys on the floor that meshes well together, and at every single minute and every single substitutions that the Spurs do. The Spurs will continue to use Boris Diaw in the starting lineup and it is up to Coach Spoelstra to respond to that, because clearly Rashard Lewis at this very moment in time in the starting lineup is not helping.

Here is my fantasy lineup for the Heat on Game 5. C Bosh. PF James. SF Battier. SG Wade. PG Cole.  Yes, you read that right, Norris Cole. He has not earned a starting call in this series, but that move should be a wakeup call for Mario Chalmers. The Heat was comfortable enough to wait for Chalmers to be himself and get out of his slump but they actually haven't done anything yet to ensure that. Benching him in the first quarter should give him the slap he needs. And hopefully Chalmers respond positively and convince Spoelstra to play him more come the second half. As for Shane Battier, he is there to help stop these early Spurs runs. They need defense. Defense wins championships, and certainly lack of it spells disaster like what we have seen in the last two games.

My next pick.. Danny Green. There's no telling if he'll have a good game. My last pick (Ray Allen) dropped me from 100 percentile to 99p, and I hope Green gets a 20+ PRA so I can stay at 99p (this year's target). A single digit outing will be disastrous. A 30+ outing may shoot me back up to 100p.

Good luck on your potential final picks!