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As the camera closed in on Miami Heat coach Eric Spoelstra late in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals, there appeared a look of pale resignation that belied the sunny south beach environs.
He realised that the Heat’s home court advantage in this already thrilling series had all but disappeared.
And as he swung around he seemed to look in the direction of a dapperly dressed figure cutting a stylish swathe behind his disbelieving players on the Heat bench.
The figure was former championship winning Miami big man and hall of famer Alonso Mourning , and Spoelstra may have hoped he could still suit up.
The former Heat enforcer still holds the franchise record for blocks and it was something akin to his defensive prowess that was lacking in the paint for Miami in this game.
Indeed, the 6’8” LeBron James was predictably doing his best impersonation of ‘Zo’.
But Indiana’s victory was largely built on the back of the 7 foot 2 inch frame of Roy Hibbert.
As a good friend would forcefully declare when talking of a Hibbert type of presence ‘oh yeah mate, he’s a big alright just look at him?’
But you don’t need to consider my mates pseudo man crush on 6’10” or bigger NBA ballers to figure out where Miami will continue to struggle in this series.
Chris Bosh is an effective offensive weapon who has the ability to space the floor and in this way can affect Hibbert’s devastating though stationary game. But so far in this series Bosh is a big man in numerical measurement only.
His meagre return of seven rebounds through the first two games is less than his season average for single game totals, more Tim Hardaway than Alonso Mourning.
Bosh, along with Miami local lad Udonis Haslem, must crash the boards with more force in order to negate Hibbert’s, and to a lesser extent David West’s, presence on the offensive glass.
Hibbert was always going to be a tough match-up for the undersize Heat, but as Jeff Van Gundy so accurately and eloquently puts it ‘You got LeBron James, what else do you need’.
Well seemingly you need ‘a genuine big’, something Miami now seems desperately lacking.
After the heartbreak of losing game one in overtime, popular opinion was that the young and often offensively loose Pacers would not put up a similar fight in game two
The heat would have adjusted, it was thought, and the Pacers would be lucky to stay with King James and his merry men
But these Pacers are well coached by their boyish mentor Frank Vogel and along with Hibbert the Pacers have another bona fide superstar in Paul George.
In fact it was George who sparked the Pacers on both ends of the floor when they needed the most.
His defensive prowess is much hyped but in these playoffs it has been George’s offensive production that has seen Indiana’s pretension to the title move from pie in the sky to cooking in the oven.
Through the regular season George averaged 17 points, but up until this point the playoffs have seen him step that production up 20 per game. And through the first two games of these Eastern Conference finals he is scoring 25 a game.
And in David West and the aforementioned Hibbert, Paul George has found his John and Ringo.
And how fitting that the reigning King of the court LeBron James now finds himself in arguably this seasons most exciting match-up, against an opponent led by a young Pacer who suddenly seems to have legitimate claims to official ‘superstar’ status.
This was confirmed as much in one memorable 10-second period where we were treated to what will hopefully become a regular occurrence in this already enthralling series.
With half time looming Paul George stormed the Heats lane and threw down the kind of nasty dunk that hip-hop lyricists love to reference.
To add drama to the spectacle, the dunk was on LeBron James and the resulting effect on the crowd was akin to a mass injection of codeine.
Then LeBron demanded the ball.
Really, it shouldn’t be so remarkable that a man who has made this game look so ridiculously easy walks up the court with the all defensive Paul George guarding him (the man who just moments before had shown the most public lack of respect to a King one can deliver) and casually knocks in a buzzer beating three pointer from 26 feet.
It was a breathtaking taste of what will hopefully become a main course throughout the remainder of this series.
The series now swings to Indiana, and if the fans of any NBA team could be equated to a horde of ravenous zombies, it’s the Indiana army that continues to proudly turn up night after night at the Pacers home in Minneapolis.
For a part of America that so proudly espouses its religious adoration for the game of basketball, it must be a sore point that Indiana has so far been starved of a championship.
But with Hibbert and George hungry to posterise more Heat victims the success hungry Pacer faithful now believe they have the team to feast on a championship pie, and make Miami eat one more humble.
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