by David Zizmor

San Antonio (4) Miami (1): When San Antonio’s AT&T Center didn’t have cool air in game one of this series and it disabled the Heat to lose the first game of the series it almost set the tone for this match up. The Heat did come back and won game two and the way the Heat played it it looked like it would be a repeat of last season’s championship.

Last season’s finals was a lot closer with these same two teams but this year they traded body blows, and this series didn’t turn out that way. It was not going to be a complete loss for the Spurs as the Spurs took game three in Miami. After the Heat lost yet another game in game four the Spurs took a 3-1 advantage.

The Spurs really took it to Miami and it was the typical in the way that this series went. The Spurs flipped the script by winning game seven by a big margin. No one really believed Miami could come back, the Heat had a very good swarming defense. The Heat was not able to keep up with San Antonio’s passing. This is not the same Spurs team compared to last year.

The Spurs did have some ability to swing the ball out at the parimiter at a whole new level, last year they were able to swing at the parimiter but they were still a post up team. They would throw it down to the Spurs Tim Duncan and get it down to him whenever they had the chance and they would also throw it down to one of the bigger players like center Tiago Splitter.

This year there was none of that this year’s team is primarily a parimiter team they definitely worked some of those post up swings and the options were there but this Spurs team is all about making the extra passes. As good as the Heat defense is and let’s face it their one of the best in the league the Spurs were so good.

The Spurs passed the ball around and they had that extra guy to move the ball and the Heat just couldn’t keep up the Spurs were always one pass ahead of them and over the course of the series the Heat just couldn’t hang with the Spurs speed on passing and working the ball outside the arc. The Heat were just not deep enough.

Miami just could not keep up in this series, they don’t have back court guys like the Spurs have, the problem is everybody thinks that Miami is all about the Big Three but the fact of the matter is that Dwayne Wade has really fallen off. He got a lot of rest this season, this is not the same guy who lead the Heat to the finals in game six over Dallas.

Wade has had knee injuries, he is just simply sapped, he doens’t have the speed to run the parimiter and he doesn’t have the agility anymore to hang with some of the top players and at times he became a liability for the Heat. LeBron James and Chris Bosh played well but Wade definitely took a step back.

David Zizmor covered the NBA for the 2013-14 season for http://www.sportsradioservice.com