I'm out of practice on writing. Bleah. You should have heard the thoughts of me and my friends during the game last night...we speak coachspeak better than coaches. "Our defense is terrible, Westbrook can't buy a bucket, and we need to figure out how to close down on those drives." "Miami has more energy, they want it more than we do." "That was rough. We've now lost home court, and we're going to Miami. Champions win on the road, so...it's time to go."
Miami's scorching start lead Heat to 100-96 victory; ties series
Game 2 of the 2011-12 NBA Finals came down to Kevin Durant and LeBron James, just what many basketball fans were hoping for. But this dream scenario nearly never came to pass, since there was barely any hope for rescuing this season.
Just days after Super Bowl XLV, the NFL went into a lockout after an arguement on how to split revenue. Coaches couldn't talk to players, players couldn't talk to team employees, it was a mess. For months, until the middle of July, the only offseason news was made in courtrooms, with day after day of reporters filiing stories that "...The owners and players' representatives met today, discussing the labor agreement and revenue sharing, but came no closer to finding any common ground..." Thankfully, it was resolved, and we had a football season characterized by one of the most polarizing figures in sports in recent memory, Tim Tebow; Peyton Manning's injury and the Colts' haplessness without him; and the Suck for Luck Sweepstakes, racing to see who could be the worst team in the league, and thereby getting Stanford QB Andrew Luck. The Super Bowl was a rematch of a game four years ago that nobody really cared about the first time, the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots again, getting the first points of the game on a safety.
Just as the NFL was un-locking itself, the NBA went into lockdown mode. As awful as it would be to lose an entire season of pro football, it'd be almost as bad, if not worse, to lose an entire season of pro basketball, because that would have an enormous impact on the small-market teams in the league(Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Portland, etc), and send the fan bases of those teams into a deep depression. So there was MORE talks where nothing happened, MORE lawyers, MORE reports of "...The owners and players' representatives have met again to discuss the labor agreement and revenue sharing, but came no closer to finding any common ground in today's talks..."
This stretched on into late October, when Derek Fisher(of the Los Angeles Lakers, and president of the NBA Player's Association) and various high-ranking league officials finally hammered out an agreement that was an acceptable compromise, and so there would be a season after all; starting on Christmas Day, and only lasting 66 games, instead of 82. It started out with Miami crushing Dallas and Oklahoma City pounding Orlando, and all through the season that appeared to be the Finals matchup. The Heat clawed their way through the regular season and playoffs, flopping, pounding, and whining their way past their first round opponent, then Indiana and Boston. The Thunder lost backup point gaurd Eric Maynor to an ACL tear in the first two weeks of the year, they picked up Fisher from the Lakers just before the trade deadline, giving a much-needed boost to morale and team chemistry. Although they faded at the tail end of the regular season, they swept defending champ Dallas in four games, fought down the Lakers in five, and then rallied from two games down to knock San Antonio off their perch, Game 1 of the 2011-12 NBA Finals Tuesday was all Heat in the first two quarters, but Durant and Russell Westbrook were too much for the South Beach super squad, and OKC won 105-94.
Game 2 on Thursday night at the Chesapeake Energy Arena began with Sara Evans singing the National Anthem(She did well, though some lines were hurried and other notes extended too far), and the game itself starting out much like the previous contest: All Miami. NOTHING was falling for the boys from Loud City, and EVERYTHING went down for the visitors. The Heat had leads of 18-2 and 25-8 to start the game, terrible Thunder defense and lights-out shooting from Shane Battier and James set the tone early. James Harden scored ten points in the opening frame, but Oklahoma City still trailed at the end of the first quarter 27-15. The second verse was more of the same, except coming from Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade, and although OKC pulled within ten at one point, the halftime cushion for the Heat was still a dozen, as they led 55-43.
The third quarter was like a bad high school game; one team committing stupid fouls on every other posession, and the other team's star turning their play up about three notches. The Thunder got balanced scoring, but too many James drives sent him to the free-throw line, and he made them pay, going 6-for-6 as his team led with one quarter to go by a 78-67 score. Despite being in severe foul trouble, Durant went aggressively to the basket on offense, trying to lift his team up for a third-straight comeback win. Steadily and slowly, the lead was chipped down to 94-91 with 1:42 left, but a Serge Ibaka block was ruled a goaltend, and James slapped Durant on a game-tying jumper without penalty, and so a game that was a nightmare to witness ended so close, but so far away, as Miami had more energy, more fire, and they led from tip to buzzer all the way as they tied the series at one game apeice with the 100-96 win.
The series shifts to Miami now for the next three games, Game 3 will be at the American Airlines Arena at 7 p.m. Sunday night, and the Heat now have homecourt advantage.
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