The NBA finals: why the Heat will win the championship



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Miami Heat NBA Finals

The Miami Heat celebrate their NBA conference basketball playoff final victory over the Boston Celtics with the Eastern Final trophy on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2020, in Lake Buena Vista, Florida (AP Photo / Mark J. Terrill)

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida: This choice doesn’t make much sense.

The best scorer for the Miami Heat could be a rookie with a child’s face. The best player had never made it past the second round of the playoffs before this season. The starting center wasn’t good enough to make a United States Basketball World Cup team that went to China last year and only managed to finish seventh. And the Heat have been the best team in the NBA this season in basically two categories: actual shooting percentage (which is good) and wasted double-digit leads (which it isn’t).

Hey, it’s 2020. Nothing makes sense.

And that’s why this is the choice: the Miami Heat are going to win the NBA championship.

During the 25 years that Pat Riley has been in Miami and running the Heat, the franchise has been governed by a code that occurred to him. His mandate, every day, is to be “the hardest-working, best-conditioned, most professional, selfless, toughest, meanest, nastiest team in the NBA.”

Riley had no idea that he was writing the plan for how a basketball team could thrive inside a bubble during a pandemic, of course.

The Heat were made for the bubble. The bubble rewards toughness, both in body and mind. He tested players and teams in ways no one thought possible; isolation from the outside world, isolation from family, the inability of billionaire athletes and coaches to come and go as they please and do what they want, with whom they want, when they want.

Miami embraced all of that. Jimmy Butler, with a baby at home and whose full circle is a tight-knit group of family and friends who aren’t in the bubble, tried to relax by opening what started out as a fake coffee shop for teammates that could actually become a real business opportunity. He didn’t want his family in the bubble even when guests were allowed; He wanted that advantage that comes from not having loved ones nearby, that responsibility he feels to make up for his absence by taking them a championship.

Butler made it through the second round for the first time. Tyler Herro, a rookie in name only, takes and hits big shot after big shot. Bam Adebayo, who came into this season with his soul on fire after feeling like USA Basketball rejected him, has shown the world what the Heat already knew: He is a superstar and is about to be paid as such.

Erik Spoelstra is about to train in the final for the fifth time in 10 years. The work he has done on the bubble is masterful. Kendrick Nunn and Meyers Leonard were starters for this team all season. They’re not in the rotation now, after the Heat changed the way they play for the playoffs, a move most coaches wouldn’t have the guts to make. Not Spoelstra. The Heat always bet on one thing: find a way to win it all.

Beating the Los Angeles Lakers in this series will not be easy. They, like any other NBA team, have no way of silencing LeBron James, who will be highly motivated to beat his former team. James and Anthony Davis are the two best players in this series. The finals are usually a showcase of stars; the team with the most stars usually wins.

Nothing is typical in 2020.

The Lakers are talented. The Heat have the chemistry. If there is one lesson learned from this pandemic world that exists now, it should be to trust science.

Chemistry wins. Heat in six.

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