Chris Bosh managed to do the unexpected on Sunday, scoring 34 points and leading the Heat to a 96-85 victory over the Chicago Bulls. The win has given Miami a 2-1 lead in the Eastern Conference Championship Series.
Bosh took advantage of the fact that Chicago focused mainly on the usual threats; LeBron James and Dwayne Wade.
Chicago’s coach Tim Thibodeau said, “Bosh was terrific from the start of the game, very aggressive and I thought that we allowed him to get his confidence early.” He added, “He is hard to slow down once he gets going like that. We gave him too much space, we didn’t challenge his shot properly. He had a big night.”
The Heat’s coach Erik Spoelstra was thrilled with Bosh’s performance. “We run a lot of our offense through him regardless of whether he’s getting shots or not,” Spoelstra said. “Tonigth dictated something else. We needed him to be aggressive. Easy shots and opportunities in this series are hard to come by. He was able to take the pressure off the other guys, to get some baskets, which helped.”
Thibodeau said of the game, “We have to get up and challenge their shots better. We have to finish our defense.”
Spoelstra said “There is absolutely nothing easy in this series and it is all about enduring, sustaining and finding a way to grind it out. It is a battle, a scrap, a fight every possession. The gs did a good job of that and particularly to find a way to break it open in the last five.”
Meanwhile…
Despite a late comeback, the Dallas Mavericks held off the Oklahoma City Thunder, ending the game with a 93-87 victory.
By the end of the first quarter, the Mavs had accrued a 15-point lead. They led throughout the game, though the Thunder rallied in the fourth quarter, reducing the deficit to a mere 4 points with 24 seconds left.
Shawn Marion, Mavericks forward, said “We came out and did what we needed to do. We knew what we were capable of. It was a matter of us doing things we got away from, especially on the defensive end. We got away from communicating and we weren’t the aggressors at the defensive end.”
Thunder coach Scott Brooks said that Russell Westbrook’s “three might have been an opportunity for him to attack, his attack game was really working so he maybe should have done that instead, but the other threes were wide open. When you shoot 1-for-17 on 3 pointers, it’s not good.”
