One of the main stories for Game 3 was how the Spurs would be able to be competitive, after being able to outscore Miami in just one quarter on the first two games of the finals. Well, they crushed that trend by outscoring the Heat in all four quarters of Game 3! San Antonio's defensive gameplan was the same as before: dare Lebron and Wade to beat them from the outside, while clogging the lane to prevent them from getting easy points. This is forcing Haslem to play less and less time on this series. He played 17 minutes on Game 1, 16 minutes on Game and now 10 minutes on Game 3, as Miami is only able to get some offensive flow by playing small ball. Lebron James didn't have a good game at all. He hesitated too much on shooting at the basket, even when he was wide open on several possessions. His mindset to involve his teammates on the game with good passes won't simply work given the space that the Spurs are giving him on the outside.
But the big difference on Game 3 was the incredible offensive performance of the Spurs. They looked more aggressive and they didn't hesitate when the opportunity to score in transition appeared. After scoring just 4 and 3 fast break points on the first two games of the series, San Antonio scored 20 fast break points on Game 3! Gary Neal and Danny Green were unstoppable and most of their shots were dictated by an awesome ball movement! However, there was also a lot of demerit from Miami's defense in my opinion. They looked sloppy on the close outs and their energy level was no way near the same level the Spurs' energy. San Antonio doesn't have as a philosophy to crush the offensive glass, but they still had 19 offensive rebounds on this game, for an insane 50% offensive rebound rate! The Heat were sending too much help defenders to contain a hobbled Tony Parker, who took advantage of that to find open teammates. This is why he had 8 assists in just 27 minutes!
Mario Chalmers had a great Game 2 with 6-12 FG, 2-4 3pts, 5-5 FT. 19 points and no turnovers, but he was flat out awful on Game 3 with 0-5 FG and 4 turnovers. On the other hand, Norris Cole was also out of control, something that forced Coach Spoelstra to use a lineup without a pure PG! The pace of Game 3 continued being slow, even though it was the fastest game of the series so far. History shows that whoever wins the Game 3 has a great shot of winning the championship and San Antonio with a perfect game with an almost perfect execution in both ends of the floor is now closer to grab the title.
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