To be fair, any team missing their leading scorer or second best scorer is gonna get stomped. The heat made it to the finals with those conditions the last 2 finals appearances. Not to say they wouldn’t lose at full strength, they probably would but none of us can say that for sure. What we can say for sure is no team has ever won without their best or second best scorer in a finals series.
They have been to the finals twice and the conference finals 3 times in the last 4 years, so they are getting a little bit of deference even if their roster looks less talented than the other inner contenders.
If you ask people “which team is going to win the title?” you can’t treat the results as a ranking.
This doesn’t say that the Heat have a higher chance of winning the title. Normally both the Lakers and Heat would have 0 votes, but one person decided to make a long shot pick
I’m a massive Lakers hater but I’d definitely still give them a better chance than the Heat
Even if the Heat somehow get through the East again they’ll just get stomped by any of the top Western teams that they match up horribly against
To be fair, any team missing their leading scorer or second best scorer is gonna get stomped. The heat made it to the finals with those conditions the last 2 finals appearances. Not to say they wouldn’t lose at full strength, they probably would but none of us can say that for sure. What we can say for sure is no team has ever won without their best or second best scorer in a finals series.
They have been to the finals twice and the conference finals 3 times in the last 4 years, so they are getting a little bit of deference even if their roster looks less talented than the other inner contenders.
If you ask people “which team is going to win the title?” you can’t treat the results as a ranking.
This doesn’t say that the Heat have a higher chance of winning the title. Normally both the Lakers and Heat would have 0 votes, but one person decided to make a long shot pick