The Miami Heat have pushed the Los Angeles Lakers harder than anybody expected in the NBA Finals. Role players will likely play a huge role in Game 6.
The NBA Finals are generally decided by the best player on the best team playing up to that title. Whether it be LeBron James with the Cleveland Cavaliers or Miami Heat, or Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant with the Golden State Warriors, NBA championships go to the best. In the 2020 NBA Finals, however, there’s a path for the Miami Heat to change this trend for at least one series.
The Los Angeles Lakers dominate these Finals in star power. LeBron and Anthony Davis are (at least on paper) the two best players in the series, with Jimmy Butler coming in somewhere behind them in the power rankings of superstars in the league. However, these games aren’t played on paper, and considering that nothing can be taken for granted in the Orlando NBA bubble, that’s never been more true than this season.
Alongside Jimmy Butler, the Heat have a cadre of role players who have been full of surprises this season. Whether it be the undrafted backcourt duo of Kendrick Nunn and Duncan Robinson or supposed salary cap fodder trade throw-in Jae Crowder, the Miami Heat have been able to roll out waves of stunning performances from unexpected sources.
In these NBA Finals, down 3-2, more of the same is going to be needed if the Heat want to pull off this stunning upset. With the unrelenting schedule in the bubble since the beginning of the season’s restart, it’s been a war of attrition for every team that’s made it deep, and the Heat and Lakers are no exception.
The Heat lost Bam Adebayo for multiple games early in the series, and Goran Dragic has been out since Game 1 and is unlikely to return regardless of how long the series goes. As for the Lakers, they’re playing without Avery Bradley and Rajon Rondo missed the first couple of months of bubble action. As it stands now, Anthony Davis is playing with a painful heel contusion that hasn’t impacted his performance yet, but there’s at least one more game to play and that might change over time.
So often in the NBA Finals, stunning performances out of nowhere from role players swing momentum in the favor of ultimate champions. Current Laker Danny Green did just that in the 2013 Finals, nearly catapulting himself into the Finals MVP conversation.
For the Heat, the goal will be to play the Lakers’ stars to as close to a draw as possible and let role players put them over the top like they did in Game 5. While Davis and James combined for 68 points, the Laker bench quartet of Markieff Morris, Kyle Kuzma, Rajon Rondo and Alex Caruso combined to score 14 points on 5-of-22 from the floor. In response, Duncan Robinson alone scored 26 points, shooting 7-of-13 from 3-point range.
The Heat will surely use a short bench again in Game 6 after only playing seven players in Game 5, and everybody who touches the floor is going to have to carry a heavy load to push them over the top. In a playoff series, you know what LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Jimmy Butler can give you, but for the Heat to win they’ll need more than ever from Robinson, Crowder, Tyler Herro and Kendrick Nunn.
On a team with multiple dynamic role players and a culture that encourages them to go beyond what they thought they could do, it’s going to be their time to push the Heat to a seventh game.