NBA: HEAT VS. THUNDER, GAME FOUR 

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“SPORTS NOTEBOOK” posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of every week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.

NBA:   IT’s always a shock to the system, the opposite of what you’ve expected suddenly happening, for instance, the Miami Heat recovering from a 17 point deficit and taking a lead in the fourth quarter of game four of the best-of-seven 2012 NBA Finals. Add, Heat forward LeBron James slipping and getting hurt, and, in spite of that, scoring a three-pointer that tied the game late in that final period.

All was supposed to be the Oklahoma City Thunder and forward Kevin Durant and point guard Russell Westbrook pouring it on as comeback kids in the latter moments of a fourth quarter, besting a tired and going cold Miami Heat. And, Westbrook isn’t the sort to have activated a fourth-quarter game-changing and amateurish foul when a single point could make the difference between winning and losing, especially after putting more than 40 points on the board, but that is what Westbrook committed, causing the Thunder to land beyond chances of a three-pointer tying or taking the game; final outcome, Miami 104, Thunder, 98, placing the Heat ahead of the Thunder, three games to one.

We suggested in past columns that the Heat/Thunder battle for the year’s NBA championship would track a few levels of basketball competition---Level One, the extremely talented, strategically savvy but older Heat playing against the very talented, faster, as strong, also strategic but younger Thunder. Could speed and stamina be trump cards for the Thunder, in addition to the team’s roughly equal skills and sufficient array of smart

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tactics? Level Two, Would teamwork prevail over star power, in that even with stars Durant and Westbrook being capable of record-breaking domination the Thunder functions more as a team executing passes, rebounding, blocking, all taking shots; Level Three, Would the series become a display of “shooting stars,” that is, a competition mainly of the Thunder’s Durant and Westbrook versus the Heat’s LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh?

Of course, we’ve seen a lot of each of the three levels of play, with variations, e.g., last night the Heat’s Mario Chalmers joining his team’s big three as a spoiler in defense and as a shooter (25 points at the finish, same number as Wade. James finished with 26 points and 12 assists plus nine rebounds).

The final periods of games three and four between the Heat and the Thunder have shown that the differences in age and experience are hardly impacting, and that the Heat has the stamina needed for accelerated fourth quarter tempos. But if anything is certain, the game-changing agents of excitement and for jump-ups in the numbers, for fans and for their respective teams, have been James and Wade of the Heat, and Durant and Westbrook of the Thunder, suggesting that an NBA team needs star power to be in the NBA Finals and attain the league’s number one spot.

There are situations in a championship series game when intensity of play and close scoring require transition from an essentially teamwork-dominated playbook to letting one, two or three star shooters “out of the gate,” to become rescuers for that final point that establishes victory. On the other hand, there are moments when the best among star shooters are so well guarded they can only pass and possibly rebound, causing need for the accent to be on teamwork mode, no one taking “hero shots.” NBA franchises like the Denver Nuggets have that teamwork capacity for prevailing against many other franchises and it brought them to the 2012 playoffs. But without a star shooter of Durant-like caliber able to pull them ahead in critical situations, the Nuggets were eliminated in the first round. Well, we may have proof of necessity for both styles of rostering, for five plus reserves playing essentially as a team, sharing the ball, but with star shooters always at the ready for changing a game via their superb individual skills. We could know a lot more about this on Thursday, June 21, and more about whether the Heat's big three are a better combo than the Durant/Westbrook duo, as the Heat challenges the Thunder at the Thunder’s home base, game five.   

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