I will admit that I haven't been watching a great deal of the playoffs so far this year because I have been quite busy with a lot of different things. I'll jump on board a bit later on but some of the games have been exciting enough just me seeing the highlights.
I was really glad that I tuned into the game last night where the Cleveland Cavaliers put on a show and seriously embarrassed the Miami Heat... I mean honestly, I have never seen a butt whoopin' like that in the playoffs at any point in my life.
I enjoy watching Heat games because there is something about that team where it appears at times as though they aren't really trying for most of the season and simply wait until the playoffs before they show what they are truly capable of. This has happened with them multiple times in the past with the most noteworthy being in 2023 where they barely made the playoffs then went on to absolutely wreck everyone, all of which were ranked lower than them, on their way to the finals.
The Denver Nuggets were the only team that could stop them it seemed, and Denver made it happen in just 5 games which was a surprise to everyone since Miami had been tossing down juggernauts left and right on their way to what would have been one of the most epic Cinderella stories of NBA history.
But I digress, that is not at all what has happened to Miami in this particular playoff picture. The first two games weren't really close either though and it was pretty clear that Miami was not going to pull of an upset here. They lost 4 straight and are now heading back to Miami to live lives of extreme luxury in one of the most exciting places on earth, the poor saps.
But game 4 was just something else. I tuned in hoping that Miami would be like a badger that had been cornered by a pack of dogs and instead, what I got was what looked like and NBA team playing against a mid-tier college team.
It was 43-17 after the first quarter and 72-33. You want to know how many teams have come back from a 39 point deficit in an NBA playoff game?
Not just playoff games either. no team has ever come back from 39-points down in any game in the NBA, ever.
The 2nd half was a bit more close between the two teams but seriously guys, the Cav's were up by so many points that they no longer needed to play at 100% and well, sadly, it kind of looked like a lot of the Heat players were no longer trying as hard as they could anymore either.
It seemed as though Miami didn't know what to do at this point and just laid down to die. They ended up sing their bench extensively, putting Nikola Jovic in the game for 30 minutes where he scored 24 points. It isn't super-rare for Jovic to play this much, but when you consider that he played just over a single minute in game-1 vs. the Cavs, this was a massive step up.
Things just looked really sloppy for Miami as they also had a staggering 19 turnovers and a not so great 18 personal fouls. Their shooting percentage was laughable as well shooting 39% overall and just 20% from 3-point-land.
At the half the game was the 3rd largest point-spread between 2 teams in NBA history, by the end of the game, which was won (obviously) by Cleveland with 138-83, (55 point difference) is the 4th largest point separation between two teams in the playoffs EVER. Just so you know, the largest spread in NBA history was 58 points, and it was between the Minneapolis Lakers (oh ho!) and the St. Louis Hawks in 1956.
With Cleveland winning in straight games with a total of 122 points over Miami, it is the most lopsided series win in NBA playoff history.
Yes, the Heat are the lowest seeded team in the east so it was expected they were going to lose... that's the way that brackets are set up. But a loss of this magnitude is pretty incredible still.
Now I guess the real question is this: Is Cleveland really that good? Or is Miami really that bad?