That breakneck pace was clearly too much for Butler and a worn-down Miami defense to handle. Cedric Maxwell and Chauncey Billups are the only Finals MVP winners eligible for the Hall of Fame who have not been voted in. "It's like playing the [New England] Patriots.". Interestingly, the league MVP has not always been on the championship-winning team. Alex Caruso freed Morris with a nasty flare screen. [2][3], Since its inception, the award has been given to 31 players. On this same list, the Heat rank 10th with a tad over 18 percent. James set the tone at the opening tip by defending Butler, but if it wasn't James, a Lakers defender hounded Butler everywhere he went on the floor. The Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Miami Heat 4-2 in the 2020 NBA Finals to claim their 17th championship. If I were a betting man, I’d go with the latter. Because Tim Duncan is a United States citizen by birth, as are all natives of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Tony Parker was born in Belgium. Defenses have gotten too fast, too smart helping and recovering, for any player's skill set to stop there. Caruso reads the game from one step ahead. This NBA basketball trophy is given out to the player seen as the best overall player of that year, as chosen by the media. The person with the highest number of votes wins the award. Frank Vogel started him in L.A.'s most important game, shifting to a lineup I had labeled perhaps L.A.s' most intriguing group before the bubble. Ten of his 13 buckets came at the rim. Enter Jimmy Butler. But the true reason, of course, was the hobbled Heat not wanting to challenge long-limbed big man Anthony Davis around the basket. In a postgame interview with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, Butler was asked how his team was able to pull off this win. MORE: The NBA world celebrates the Lakers' 17th championship. The award is decided by a panel of eleven media members, who cast votes after the conclusion of the Finals. But if the Heat manage to stay alive in this series and push it to six or seven games, they will have done so not because of their rebounding prowess, but in spite of it. Even teams that fall behind two games in a series only come back to win a mere 93.6 percent of the time. He did so as the best player in the series, still blowing by defenders on the edges and still overpowering them in the paint. • Shelburne: Inside the Lakers' title run It was about establishing his championship vintage in the Lakers' history. He changed teams. James was unstoppable early and often, unleashing an offensive clinic rooted in his all-world abilities to infiltrate the interior of the scoring area and wreak havoc in the paint. But they still have to make plays. It was also about proving that he could do this all again. The 31-year-old veteran out of Marquette posted only the third 40-point triple-double (James has one of the other two) in NBA finals history and carried the Heat to a 115-104 victory in Game 3, being involved in 73 of the Heat’s 124 When this partnership began, it wasn't clear how long it would last. [10] Olajuwon of Nigeria, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1993, Tony Parker of France, and Dirk Nowitzki of Germany are the only international players to win the award. Butler made it a point after Game 5 to say that he and his team left everything they had on the floor, but he was confident that they could win the last two games of the Finals and finish the Heat's dream run inside the bubble. The ball itself is nine inches in diameter, about In the 2008 Finals, Rajon Rondo scored 20 points in Games 2 through 5 combined before exploding for 21 points, 8 assists, 7 rebounds, and 6 steals in Game 6 to annihilate the Lakers and help the Boston Celtics to their 17th ring.

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