On Tuesday night, Chris Bosh returned from the abdominal
injury that had sidelined him from the Miami Heat’s last nine playoff
games. Bosh came off the bench, and
logged 9 points and 7 rebounds in just 14 minutes of limited playing time. However, for the third game in a row, the
Heat came up short against the resilient veteran Boston Celtics, dropping Game
5 of the Eastern Conference Finals 94-90.
While the general consensus from ESPN’s analysts seems to be
that coach Erik Spoelstra did not play Bosh enough in his first game back,
keeping him out of the game for the entire fourth quarter may have actually
been one of the better coaching moves he has made over the past three
games. The truth is that Bosh’s impact
on the game was a negative one for Miami, and while he still may be playing
injured, his lack of defensive presence last night only added insult to injury.
As the head coach, Spoelstra’s job is to put a winning
lineup on the floor. He is not concerned
with players’ individual stats, nor most analysts’ naïve obsession with those
stats. Nevertheless, there was one
statistic which Spoelstra could not neglect when it came to choosing his lineup
down the stretch, and that was the team-low plus/minus rating of -12 for Chris
Bosh last night.
Bosh scored all 9 of his points, while pulling down 6 out of
his 7 rebounds during the 10 minutes he played in the first half. He later returned to the lineup with just
under 4 minutes to go in the third, playing until the end of the quarter while
grabbing just one rebound, and then was sidelined for the rest of the night. Bosh says he felt healthy enough to keep
contributing, but there is good reason for why Spoelstra apparently did not
feel that those contributions were very beneficial.
Bosh exerted little to no effort on defense last night, and
only appeared to have any energy at all while on offense. Rondo was not able to effectively penetrate
until Bosh’s early minutes, and while the Celtics could not really capitalize
on Bosh’s pitiable defensive presence in the first half, Bosh’s return to the
lineup in the third sparked an 11-0 run for Boston to finish out the quarter,
while jumping out to a 5 point lead.
Kevin Garnett absolutely dominated Bosh in the paint during that time,
and even rookie big man Greg Stiemsma was able to contribute down low while
Bosh was playing.
Both of these teams pride themselves on tough lockdown
defense, so it is no wonder that Spoelstra felt more comfortable finishing out
the game without the big man whose defensive presence was virtually
nonexistent. As aforementioned, Bosh
only exerted energy on the offensive end, which also explains why 6 out of his
7 rebounds came as offensive boards. Every
time the Celtics missed a shot, Bosh was nowhere to be found, and the Heat were
forced to rely on non-big men to pull down the defensive rebounds.
For Bosh to be
effective in this series, he needs to contribute much more than just an ability
to score. The dynamic duo of LeBron
James and Dwyane Wade have shown that they can carry the team’s scoring load,
and the more shots that Bosh takes, the less shots that they take. On the offensive end, James dominated in the
first half, while Wade was their go-to scorer down the stretch. Coach Doc Rivers felt that the Celtics merely
had to weather the storm until their defensive consistency paid off, and Bosh’s
lack of a positive impact helped them to do so, while they simultaneously
increased their scoring output in each quarter due to big defensive stops. While many seem to agree that the Heat could
have won if Bosh had played more than 14 minutes, it seems to me that the head
coaches are the only ones who were really watching the game.
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