Spoelstra is being set up as the sacrificial lamb by the media.
All of the sports talk I've heard this morning has been focused on how Doc is outcoaching the kid. It makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
I think it's about 75% players, 25% coaching. And of that 25% coaching it's to find a way to properly motivate your players. Miami is a mentally weak team. They've put the notion of a championship on a pedestal...let me correct that...not one, not two, not three, not four championships...blah blah blah.
They all colluded together into superbestfriends and proclaimed to the world that they were the team to beat. The media said they were the team to beat.
They got beat.
They regrouped, put up a great regular season, and mostly plowed through the playoffs short of a couple scares. And are now looking at an even earlier exit than they did last year.
Lebron has been asked to put an entire team on him again and play ridiculous minutes, guard every position and player that's been a threat, ect. He's gassed at this point. Wade just looks completely out of it only checking in for a few quarters to make sure he still hears his name overhead.
They aren't supposed to lose and do not seem capable of dealing with teams that fight back and simply want it more.
That's where some of the coaching comes in. Call your whiny princesses out on their behavior. Suck it up, know that you are better than they are and freaking play like it. Lebron going scoreless for 8 minutes while Boston makes a massive run is just unnacceptable. You're Lebron F'n James. Put the ball on the floor and get to the basket.
Miami has no answer to Garnett. Whenever he steps on the floor Miami's offense just curls up and dies and Boston exploits the middle of the lane on almost every possession. That's a coaching problem.
But coaching only goes so far. The players wrote themselves in as champions. The media wrote them in as champs. Hell, so many of us even in this thread predicted it.
But look where they are now? Boston is simply a tougher, mature team that pulls themselves up and gets shit done when it needs to get done. Miami doesn't have that mentality and that's a player problem. A coach can only do so much. They need a veteran player that is both calm but commanding to take over, pull them together, and steer them through this.
And I don't think they have that guy on their team. Wade won a championship but he's not a leader. Lebron has nothing to show for his HOF ability to pad box scores. Bosh has barely sniffed the playoffs in his career. They just look lost and almost hopeless once their dream of a championship starts to fizzle out.
It's not fun being propped up and having to live up to expectations. It's way more fun being the underdog beating them.