Heat vs Pistons Game 3 (Spread)

[Kori Ellis]

:angel

[jochhejaam]

vbookie is back on line, thanks Kori. :)

Pistons 87 - Heat 83

[jochhejaam]

Here's an article written by Dan Le Batard, sports columnist for the Miami Herald.



Heat wants series more than Pistons, but that won't matter
By Dan Le Batard

Want isn't worth much now. ''Passion'' and ''desire'' and ''effort'' -- our abstract sports cathedrals -- send Heat coach Pat Riley everywhere from Chinese military books to Motown music in search of inspiration and motivation. But none of it helps much once you reach the highest levels of sports, which is where his team has now arrived.

You can be moved by mojo guru Anthony Robbins to awaken the giant within, and pour all your hopes and dreams into the pursuit, but you aren't going to take that rebound from Ben Wallace, a giant with more fast-twitch muscle fiber. Athletes love to take the result and announce that ''They wanted it more'' or ''We wanted it more,'' but it is the scoreboard that produces that feeling, not the feeling that produces that scoreboard.

The Dallas Mavericks did not beat defending champion San Antonio because they were hungrier. They won because they got a bounce. That's it. Luck. If metronome Tim Duncan makes one shot he usually makes in either of two games, the Mavericks are done and extraterrestrial Dirk Nowitzki is somehow less of a superstar and Avery Johnson is somehow less of a coach.

NO DIFFERENCE

There was no difference between those two teams, just as there is no difference between Miami and Detroit. LeBron James already would have dispatched the Pistons if his team had secured a single rebound. At these levels, there is precious little separation between great and better than, sometimes, no more than a bounce.

It is why Oakland A's GM Billy Beane says he'd rather have ''luck'' than a player with ''leadership'' or ''heart'' or ''will to win.'' Because if you have luck, all the other stuff gets attached to you, anyway. The Pistons will ''know how to win'' right up until they lose, whereupon they won't.

We overcomplicate the utopian playground of sports sometimes with coach worship and manifestos on desire and discipline, but Rasheed Wallace is a champion today and Dwyane Wade isn't. That has nothing to do with character or chemistry or any of the other silly sports monuments we erect. Vince Carter, Richard Jefferson and Jason Kidd -- nary a championship between them -- wanted to win plenty. But Shaquille O'Neal doesn't need to awaken any giant within, so he just broke them all over his huge knee.

Shaq's greatest gift? He's bigger than everyone else. A foot shorter, and he'd be one of the worst basketball players you have ever seen.

Its too bad for Heat fans that hunger doesn't help you at this point in an NBA season. Because Miami wants this series more than Detroit.

The Pistons already have been champs. Its starters are fueled by personal pride and muscle memory that make athletes competition-aholics, but they already have opened the locked treasure chest Miami now surrounds with desperate curiosity. It isn't weakness, but rather human nature to be satiated upon wearing the jewelry. You are never as hungry after you have feasted.

Michael Jordan, gluttonous about greatness, was insatiable. That's why Pistons fan Kid Rock says the caste system of fame rises to the heavens like this: mortal, sports star, movie star, rock star and then, above all else, Michael Jordan.

But it wasn't want that made Jordan a legend. It's that he was a lot better than everyone else. That's what kept him in the air, a physical ability to defy gravity, not a desire to do so. Wanting and doing are not the same thing. Rasheed Wallace, for instance, very much wants to be sane. But some things are out of his control.

The Pistons? They have more reasons to be satisfied than Miami. Ben Wallace, once unwanted and underappreciated, is now a four-time Defensive Player of the Year. Rasheed Wallace, once maligned as a cancer, was the final undervalued piece that made Detroit a winner and is so proud of it that he actually brings a heavyweight championship belt to games. Journeyman discard Chauncey Billups has rightly earned a nickname (''Mr. Big Shot'') and a champion's respect. Rip Hamilton was a champ in college and the NBA.

Miami, meanwhile, is littered with uncommon want. No one in the league desires more than Alonzo Mourning, playing on a borrowed kidney and a million pills. Gary Payton is here for no other reason than to wear the crown just once before punctuating his Hall of Fame career. Antoine Walker, tired of losing in Boston and Atlanta, became a third piece and occasional bench player because he wanted winning. Veterans James Posey and Jason Williams have never been this far. Overachiever Udonis Haslem is one of the league's best effort players. And Wade, who grew up in Jordan's Chicago, knows that a ring is what will help him climb from selling more jerseys than anyone in the NBA to another level of stardom more substantive than superficial.

SHAQ WANTS MORE

Even Shaq is famished. Riley and Stan Van Gundy were taken aback by how broken O'Neal was after losing Game 7 to Detroit last season. O'Neal can be surprisingly sensitive, and he has talked about three rings being an underachievement. He wants to win without Kobe Bryant, badly. He's not interested in being merely considered today's most dominant player.

And, yet, none of it really matters. Williams can't cover Billups, and Walker can't cover Tayshaun Prince. It isn't a lack of desire or effort. It's that Billups and Prince have unusual physical gifts to exploit their weak defenses. All of Haslem's desire hasn't kept him from shooting 1 of 12 in this series. What Rasheed has over Haslem is four inches, which is all it takes to separate great from good.

On the other side, Detroit can want to stop Wade with everything in its soul, and he'll still drop 17 on all their braids in a fourth quarter. And O'Neal hits poor Ben Wallace with such ferocity that it makes all four of the Defensive Player of the Year awards rattle.

We're due a close game in these playoffs. Miami hasn't had a single one of those edge-of-your-seat, last-second, makes-your-stomach-hurt-and-your-facetwitch playoff games. Maybe we'll see it tonight.

And in the final moments, as the noise and tension rises and Heat fans try to will a win, the desire of the spectators will be substantive and emotional and have as much impact on the game as that of the players.

Which is to say, not very much at all.

[Spurologist]

The Dallas Mavericks did not beat defending champion San Antonio because they were hungrier. They won because they got a bounce. That's it. Luck. If metronome Tim Duncan makes one shot he usually makes in either of two games, the Mavericks are done and extraterrestrial Dirk Nowitzki is somehow less of a superstar and Avery Johnson is somehow less of a coach.

NO DIFFERENCE


I agree. It happens to all players. You put your staple in the game by going far in the playoffs. If you don't, Malone, Stockton, Charles.... will gladly welcome you to their club

[himat]

93-91 Pistons. :tu

[ALVAREZ6]

Go Pistons

[bdubya]

more like lebastard

Actually, "Le Batard" is french for "the bastard". Somehow there's gotta be a way to read that as a sign for a Heat loss tonight....

[JMarkJohns]

Sweet!

[Vinnie_Johnson]

Darn I won that sucks go get em Monday.