Miami Heat reach the NBA Finals; Again launch a late surge to beat Chicago Bulls 83–80 – part 1
The Chicago Bulls dream of reaching the NBA Finals for the first time since 1998 came to an end tonight when they lost to the Miami Heat in game-5 of their Eastern Conference Finals matchup. The Bulls were the better team for much
of the game, but again collapsed late much to the horror of a sell-out United Center crowd and eventually bowed out 83 – 80.
A return to the glory days of the Jordan era will have to wait for the Bulls, who have repeatedly fallen apart during the final stretch in this series. A major reason for that, were the struggles of league MVP Derrick Rose’s in
crunch time. These woes continued tonight as well as the Bulls again came up short. Rose had 25 points and 8 assists, but his shooting was off target again. He finished with 9-of-29 from the field.
Rose had poor support from his teammates, with only Luol Deng making any contribution of note. He had 18 points and 7 rebounds. Ronnie Brewer had 10 while Carlos Boozer had a poor night, scoring just 5 points at 1-of-6 shooting.
The Big Three of Miami were on song tonight and all three made good contributions to the game. LeBron James was the pick of the bunch, scoring game high 28 points and hauling down game high 11 rebounds while dishing out a team
high 6 assists. Dwyane Wade struggled somewhat early on and had 9 turnovers, but redeemed himself towards the end. Wade finished with 21 points. The last cog of the Big Three, Chris Bosh, had a double-double with 20 points and 10 rebounds.
The three players joined hands in the pre season to get an NBA Championship and now they have their chance. The Miami Heat did not click at first and fell on tough times during the regular season, incurring the wrath of many critics
from around the NBA. Their coach Erik Spoelstra said after the game that in the end, those struggles only made them stronger,
"We had to go through a lot of adversity," Spoelstra said. "That struggle that we went through in March, where we lost five straight - all of them close games, where we didn't execute down the stretch and weren't able to close
games out - that helped us. As painful as that was, we had to go through that fire together to be able to gain the confidence where we could be successful now in the postseason."
Luol Deng and Derrick Rose were both hot early on for Chicago as the team came out firing in the first quarter. Deng had nine and Rose scored 10 as the Bulls established a lead at the start of the game. Miami put up a decent fight
though and the quarter ended at 25 – 21 to the Bulls.
Chicago looked to build on their lead in the second quarter and a 9 – 0 run gave them a 12 point lead with six minutes remaining in the half. Miami responded by scoring seven without reply to cut the lead back down to five points,
however they could not make further inroads. The first half came to a close at 45 – 38.
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