spurs have come out strong and James misses a lob dunk. Danny Green gets a verbal from Pop. this is intense

Take a load off, sitiveni. You've booked the entire bar, go and enjoy it with your buds!

haha SS ^

Statsheet don't know why you even comment on my posts, I must really get under your skin or you are 1 really extremely jealous lefty. All my friends and I just love seeing your comments, we just crack up laughing all the time

on a serious note. Spurs came out hard, great shooting from Green, although Miami came back. Spurs need to cut the turnovers if they are any chance. leave splitter on the bench Pop.

Sitivini chilling with Ron Paul, Campbell Newman and Derek Rose in the booked-out bar with Game 5 on one bigscreen and hoops.com.au on the other.

But yeah, Splitter has been all kinds of awful this series. I don't know what anyone has ever seen in him.

Baynes will be a better player than Splitter IMO, jus wait and see...

Spurs holding on!

One win away.

Can't call this one at all. The trend says Miami wins game 6 in a blowout and then the Spurs take game 7 in a blowout, but I don't know about that. I think if SA drop game 6 they're cooked.

It will all depend on whether Manu's big game was a return to form or a one-off. Also are Wade, Bosh and Allen "back" for good or will they fall back into their slumps?

Agree with anon above. Finals last year was all kinds of awful to watch. I hate watching OKC because they are so boring and predictable. Outside of fastbreak points, their only play is: Westbrook hogs the ball or Durant hogs the ball and then shoots a long jumper. AKA the Mike Brown Cleveland offense. Yay.

Miami was a lot more predictable last year too: their offense this year is a lot better to watch and has a few more wrinkles. They used to go stagnant way more often when not playing out of a defensive stop. Lebron is making plays a lot earlier in the shot clock and dribbling the ball at the top a lot less (ie. less snore fest).

Good to see two teams who are efficient on both ends of the floor go head to head.

Heat can't win two in a row. Last time was round 1 and that was against the bucks.

I remember a quote from Doc Rivers a few years back when Boston met LeBron and Cleveland in the playoffs, it was the year the Celtics won it.

"You don't want to get to Game 7 when the best player in the world is on the other team".

Spurs need to win Game 6, you do not want to face LeBron James in Game 7 at home.

Popp outcoaching Spoelstra IMO.

Thought Pops rotations were absolutely spot on today.

-Reduced minutes for Splitter
-A lot of gametime for Diaw (who did a great defensive job: playing Diaw = allows Leonard to focus on offense - who had 16 and 8 today).
-Obviously inserting Manu into the starting lineup was a great coaching decision.

On the flipside, I though Spoelstra made some rotation errors:

-Miller: 24 minutes: Van Gundy said during the game that the Spurs were exploiting him on defence by getting whoever he was guarding to set and on ball screen and play off the switch
-Cole 6 minutes? Thought he needed more. Chalmers hasn't been good this series, and today he was pretty bad.
-Spoel's plan to play no PG for extended minutes. Problem with this = mismatch at PG. Parker was 10-14 and 6-8 FT. Crazy efficient. Got wherever he wanted.

I sort of agree about Cole. Although in the final few minutes of the 3rd today, after the Heat pulled it back to 75-74, Spo inserted Cole, and it went to s**t. What followed was a 19-1 run by the Spurs. Game pretty much over.

Can't disagree with you MACDUB,

Pop killing Spo. Having said that, Pop would beat pretty much anyone.

Mick, Campbell was doing a marathon in Ipswich Qld yesterday so he isn't here, ron paul is with Bruno(probably) and rose, well speaking of him, his friend who is a very close friend of mine is coming down tomorrow to spend the rest of the week with me, so if you have any questions for him, let me know and ill pass them on.

On the game, watching it I am worried going to Miami. they have so much firepower and James didn't fire tonight. lets hope the spurs can get the job done

The Cheese, Miami Won 4 in a row in round two last time I checked....

I thought Parker was expecting his leg to fall off prior to this game? Gamesmanship or did the Heat just not work him hard enough?

I think what Parker was saying was that he will be fine to play, but there is a risk that it could snap. Ie. it's not going to hamper him but he technically should be resting it to avoid long term injury. Or maybe just gamesmanship. Dwyane Wade has certainly done worse...

I'm hoping gamesmanship! :-)
Would like to see Spurs win and it'd be near impossible if he succumbs to injury.

My bad, yes they did win four in a row then. But since its as though they stop trying once they get themselves in a good position.

I don't think it's that, they have just come up against a team in Indy who matched up against them well and now a team in San Antonio that is very deep and has a varied attack.

Miami's offense is almost entirely based on getting stops from aggressive defensive pressure (and a lot of gambling, because they are athletic enough to do so), so if San Antonio manages to execute in the face of that pressure and not cough the ball up, Miami misses out on the sorts of easy looks that they thrive on to get themselves going.

As such, turnovers are one of he biggest stories of this series...

Thanks Captain Obvious (anon #423543). 'Miami are harder to beat in Miami'.

Teams who have won game 5 after being tied 2-2 have won 7 out of 10 series since the shift to the 2-3-2 format in the mid 80s.

Not so fast, I expect a Miami response in game 6.

When it comes to a game 7, it's clean slate - and you don't want to be the team playing against the best player in the league, particularly not at his home.

The home team is always the favourite in a Game 7. I don't have the stats handy but the home team has a huge advantage historically.

I'd like the Spurs to take the series but Miami are not out of this yet. This could be like the 1994 Finals when Houston came back from New York down 2-3 and won the last two games at home to take the series. The Lakers did the same in 2010 against the Celtics too.

Well for that history to be relevant Miami have to win game 6 anyway.

Btw, what has happened to all the 'David Stern conspiring to get the Heat a championship' talk gone?

If anything, the Spurs have had the benefit of the dubious calls from the five games so far.

Also, I'm watching the replay of yesterday's game and man, the Heat had three good chances to get it back to a one possession game. 1st time, James takes a stupid 3pt shot, 2nd time Wade turns it over, and 3rd time James misses that transition layup where Danny Green challenged him and James missed the second try.

Then the Spurs ran away with it. So disheartening.

It's weird to see a Heat game called fairly like these ones have been (by and large). Normally it's just superstar calls all day for Lebron and Wade whenever they initiate any sort of contact.

San Antonio and Miami are two of the biggest flopping teams in the league so it's good to see that the refs haven't been fooled too badly by the questionably dramatic antics of people like Wade, Battier and Ginobili.

What ever happened to the Lebron transition tomahawk posterisation? He has been piss weak on transition this whole series, especially yesterday.

And yeah, I agree that the refs have been doing a good job of keeping the foul count low so as not to encourage milking.

But seriously! When Pop served Tony Brothers on that Leonard baseline out of bounds play, that definitely warranted a tech.

Statsheet Stuffer, this is finals mate. Maybe during the regular season that's a tech, but in the added intensity, the refs just have to man up and withstand the extra "criticism".

Miami play better against teams they hate or have a reason to hate. The way the Spurs are and play, they won't piss off anyone, so there's a little bit less sting in Miami atm. That's not to say they won't come out in game 6 with a spark.

KET, when the play happened, Pop stood up and went directly at the ref yelling abuse pretty overtly. And again before a timeout huddle he was in the middle of the floor chewing the ref's ear off again. I agree that there needs to be some leeway given to all, but to me that was over the top. And I'm not a pop hater, just telling it as I see it.

Green and Leonard happened. They are both super smart defenders who have great body control/positioning and are adept at stopping transition plays.

Yeah kudos to their defence, I'm not disputing that. But James just needs to smash on them one time and they'll think twice about getting all up in his grillz yo. If he gives away an offensive foul, so be it. Might even spur (pardon the pun) his teammates on a bit.