The defending champion Miami Heat will look to once again take control of their series against the Indiana Pacers with a home Game 5 win tonight at 8:30 pm ET.
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Via ESPN:
Several times around the start of these playoffs, Miami coach Erik Spoelstra insisted that the postseason path his team would wind up navigating had the potential to be more challenging than the route they took to the NBA championship a year ago.
He's apparently correct, probably to his own chagrin.
The defending NBA champion Heat are in a bit of trouble. They can't get enough rebounds, can't get Dwyane Wade on track, can't get consistency out of Chris Bosh -- and will likely see all those story lines either grow exponentially or basically disappear Thursday night, when they host to the Indiana Pacers in Game 5 of a super-competitive Eastern Conference finals that's now knotted at two games apiece.
"We have a great locker room of Alpha competitors," Spoelstra said Wednesday. "And so they take this very seriously. We're playing against a worthy opponent and if we don't play well, they beat us. If they don't play well and we impose our identity, we beat them. That's what this is all about. So let's lace 'em up and let's get ready for Game 5."
Game 6 will be in Indiana on Saturday night, while the Western Conference champion San Antonio Spurs keep waiting to see who they'll face in the NBA Finals starting on June 6.
History says the Game 5 winner when a series is tied at 2-2 has a colossal upper hand, though that's an axiom that the Heat both proved and disproved last season.
When the Heat and Pacers split the first four games of their second-round series last year, Miami rolled to a 115-83 home win in Game 5 and captured the series in six games. One round later, Miami lost a home Game 5 of the East finals to Boston, then went on the road for Game 6 and got a virtuoso 45-point night from LeBron James to stave off elimination before coming home and winning a nailbiter of a Game 7 to advance.