Never underestimate the Miami Heat. It's seems to be a tradition of sorts down there in Florida for the Heat to have a decent but unspectacular regular season, barely make the playoffs and then really "turn up the heat" just in time to really shine in the playoffs with stunning victories that statistically speaking, don't make any sense.
The series is now over with Miami emerging victorious 4 games to 1 and while I didn't watch every single game I did watch enough to not really understand what was going on. In every single game Miami were pretty big underdogs in the Vegas lines with the most recent game predicting a Bucks win by -750. If you don't know what these numbers mean they are based on how much of a payout you would get if you bet $1000. So if you had bet on the Bucks to win and they did win, your $1000 would only get you a profit of $250. The Heat were +525 underdogs so a $1000 bet would have won you $1525.
Jimmy Butler and Kevin Love of the Miami Heat are certainly safe bets for players that are always going to have a good game but are they really better than the combination of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton? Well apparently so because despite the two Buck powerhouses getting a combined 71 points in game 5, they still lost.
Let's have a look at Butler's performance on the court.
You can see here that Butler certainly favors one particular side of the paint, and statistically speaking he is much more likely to shoot from over there but a lot of this has to do with the fact that he almost always approaches from the left hand side. It isn't that he can't shoot from the other side, he just chooses not to possibly because of the screen that is constantly set up at the point.
I love a good underdog story and I have nothing against the Bucks but a lot of this lopsided number 1 seed with home court advantage (which they didn't get to take advantage of) losing to the number 8 seed might have something to do with the strength of each team's division. I don't really know because I didn't pay enough attention to the regular season to really know. Sure you could suggest that Charlotte, Orlando, and Washington are pushover teams for the Heat to win against but here's the kicker: They didn't always win against them. In fact, they lost to the lessor teams in the Southeast just as frequently as they won.
Statistics can be a tough way to gauge a team but if we are to believe any of them the above numbers would suggest that Miami really didn't have any business defeating Milwaukee. We need to keep in mind that there are only 30 teams in the NBA so for Miami to be near the bottom in every category, again, doesn't make a lot of sense as far as their relative domination of the Bucks is concerned.
The Heat had to make it through the "play in" tournament to even get into the real playoffs and they barely managed to do that after a loss to the Atlanta Hawks in the first round. It is truly amazing that they are even in the playoffs, let along knocking out one of the favorites to win the entire thing in the first round.
It will be interesting to see how the Heat fare against the Knicks, who also were underdogs but won the first round. If the regular season means anything the Knicks should win but then again, statistics and history don't seem to have much of an impact on the Miami Heat who are continually defying all odds and expectations every time they hit the court.