The NBA Finals are the showcase basketball event of the year, and you want a sports highlight of the season to be as good as it can possibly be. Last year, the Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs created an NBA Finals that was as good as it possibly could have been. The series went seven games. The seventh game was close and exciting the whole way. The series provided an unforgettable moment, Ray Allen’s tying three-point shot for the Heat at the end of regulation in Game 6. Two proud teams went at each other tooth and nail for two weeks. If these Finals are anything like last year’s Finals, basketball fans are going to be entertained a lot.
NBA Finals Preview: Miami Heat vs. San Antonio Spurs
This matchup is so interesting because the superstars are the same, but the role players are not identical to last year. The Heat now use Rashard Lewis a lot more. He became a huge part of the series against Indiana, doing good things in many ways for Miami. Lewis played good post defense against David West. He hit a bunch of three-point shots in Games 5 and 6 of that series. He took the ball to the basket in Game 6 and became a multi-dimensional offensive player for Miami. If that is the Rashard Lewis who plays in this series, Miami is going to have a really good chance to win the series. However, Lewis was going up against an Indiana team that was very inconsistent defensively. Will San Antonio commit the same mistakes Indiana did? A lot of basketball fans think that the Western Conference was much better than the Eastern Conference during the year, and that the difference is going to matter in the playoffs. That’s a point which is going to receive a lot of discussion in the coming days.
The question is if Miami, now a team that has made four straight NBA Finals, is good enough to be great, independent of its affiliation with the Eastern Conference. Miami might no longer be an “Eastern Conference” team. The Heat might be regarded by analysts as just a great team with great players. The Spurs will have to go through them and be better than them. They’re not going to get off cheaply.
Can San Antonio be good enough to stop Miami? The Spurs are concerned about the health of point guard Tony Parker, who did not play in the second half of Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals on Saturday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Parker is the key cog in the engine for the Spurs, but San Antonio was also good enough to win without him in Game 6. San Antonio could probably win one game in this series without Parker, but it is not likely to win more than one game if its French point guard is unavailable for a longer period of time.
Not a lot of concrete information exists right now with respect to Parker, but with four full days of rest before Game 1, he should be good to go. With that being the case, San Antonio should eventually win this series.
NBA Betting Series Pick: San Antonio In 6
