After splitting the first two games of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Indiana Pacers, the Miami Heat looked vulnerable for the first time in the playoffs. Headed into Game 3, Erik Spoelstra would need to make some adjustments. He went with the nuclear option: sending LeBron James into the post. LeBron is hardly a technician on the low block, but he has such a sizable physical advantage on his defenders that it doesn’t matter. His post game is the glass box Spoelstra breaks in case of emergency. Until someone figures out a counter, it will be hard to beat Miami four times in a seven-game series.

For years, not being able to punish players with his back to the basket was the biggest hole in LeBron’s game. He’s always been able to beat bigger players off the dribble, but smaller players could at least stay in front of him and force a contested jumper. Now that he can take them to the low block and score over the top of them, there might not be anyone in the NBA who can prevent him from creating an easy shot within five feet of the rim. This season, it’s mostly been something he’s had in his back pocket. LeBron still prefers to play from the perimeter, using the post game only occasionally in the playoffs.

When LeBron plays out of the post, it takes Miami’s offense to an entirely different level. He really started to get comfortable there in last season’s NBA Finals, which ended with a 121-106 blowout in Game 5. That was the level the Heat’s offense went to in their 114-96 beating of Indiana on Sunday. They scored 70 points in one half against the No. 1 ranked defense in the NBA. With LeBron in the block, defenses have to pick their poison. On Sunday, Indiana stayed at home, not sending double teams at LeBron even when he had Paul George pinned on his hip.

The dilemma with LeBron, unlike most great scorers, is that he wants to be double teamed so he can make the extra pass. Headed into Game 4, the obvious adjustment for Frank Vogel is to send extra defenders and pack the paint. However, there aren’t many good options to send help from. In the Western Conference Finals, the San Antonio Spurs liberally helped off Tayshaun Prince and Tony Allen, essentially daring them to hit open shots. In contrast, Dwyane Wade is the only Miami perimeter player who can’t shoot with range and he’s too smart a cutter to leave open off-the-ball.

The Pacers will want to send Roy Hibbert and David West, but the Heat big men can punish Indiana when left open. Udonis Haslem, who had only three points in Games 1 and 2, was lights-out in Game 3, with 17 points on 8-9 shooting. Chris “Birdman” Andersen can’t shoot, but he knows how to flash to open spots around the basket and he has the touch and body control to finish through contact. Chris Bosh had 15 points on 6-10 shooting in only 24 minutes; having to defend him on the three-point line is almost unfair. In Miami’s system, he can explode at any time.

Everyone focuses on the pairing of LeBron and Wade, but Bosh was always the perfect complement to LeBron. The key is that he allows LeBron to play with an inverted floor. As a big man who operates at 20-25 feet from the basket, he creates room for a wing to set up shop at 5-10 feet. Most modern defenses are designed to protect the paint against a guy like LeBron and give up long two-point jumpers in the process. Those are Bosh’s favorite spots on the floor. He is an eight-time NBA All-Star who gets mostly open looks from his favorite spots. That’s how a third option averages 18 points on 54 percent shooting.

The two most important players on Miami are still under 30. A jump-shooting big man like Bosh can be successful in the NBA for an awfully long time. After all, size and shooting ability don’t fade as you get older. Bosh, if anything, could become more effective in the future. Just from adding old man strength, he’ll become a more effective deterrent in the post. This is his first postseason run with a three-point shot. If he can consistently shoot 40 percent from deep, good luck. LeBron on the box and Bosh at the three-point line is as dangerous at 34 as it is at 28.

Wade, meanwhile, has reinvented himself as a secondary playmaker. He’s no longer as explosive offensively, but he knows how to pick his spots, getting looks out of the post and with the floater. As a result, he’s still an efficient player who can impact the game in many ways. On Sunday, he had 18 points, eight assists, four rebounds and two steals on 8-14 shooting. He has plenty of 25-30 point outbursts still in him, but those are slowly becoming the exception rather than the norm. Wade is declining from such a peak that he will be effective for a very long time. He could be in a Ron Harper role by the end of this team’s run.

After the Miami onslaught in Game 3, Indiana will likely try to force the ball into their fourth and fifth options in Game 4. If there’s been a weak spot for the Heat in the playoffs, it has been consistency from Haslem, Mario Chalmers, Ray Allen, Shane Battier and Norris Cole. Chalmers is shooting 28% from three and Battier is at 21 percent in the postseason. Expect the Pacers to force those guys to make some open shots. Miami, though, has even more options on the bench. If they need more shooting, Spoelstra can use Mike Miller, James Jones or Rashard Lewis.

Vogel won’t have to make as many adjustments on the offensive end of the floor, where Indiana has had an edge the whole series. The Heat don’t really have an answer for Hibbert and West, who have looked like All-NBA players against the smaller Miami front-line. The question is whether the Pacers have enough firepower from the perimeter to win a shootout, especially without much bench scoring. They need George to average 25-30 points a game, but they also need him to be the primary defender on LeBron as well as their primary playmaker

Over the last two years, Spoelstra has subtly changed the identity of his team. Miami has become a team that wins primarily on offense, hoping to make up for deficits on the defensive glass with three-point shooting and fast break points. With LeBron on the low block and shooters spotting up along the three-point line, it’s essentially impossible to defend them. To beat them, you have to outscore them and impose your will on the other side of the floor. The problem with relying on that strategy, of course, is that LeBron plays defense too.

Late last season, the Mountain West Conference rose up to have the top average RPI in the nation. Andy Glockner of Sports Illustrated had a brilliant article explaining why this happened. Essentially the RPI favors power conferences where the home teams dominate, and the MWC teams were the best in the nation at winning at home last year. (For those that care about the math behind this, skip to the end of this post.)

Second, the RPI of MWC teams was boosted by Wyoming. A good team in November and December, but when Luke Martinez was kicked off the team for an off-court incident, Wyoming simply couldn’t score. And the RPI wasn’t smart enough realize that Wyoming was a bad team in January and February.

Finally, the other big factor in the MWC’s great RPI was that the bottom of the league was remarkably strong. Traditional power Nevada was the league’s bottom-feeder and even Nevada wasn’t a terrible team last season. The Wolfpack won at Washington in December.

All in all, it was a perfect storm that made the MWC seem like a dominant league, at least in the RPI’s eyes. The margin-of-victory systems thought the league was good too, but not nearly as dominant as what the RPI thought. And as is usually the case, the margin-of-victory metrics had the better forecast. In the NCAA tournament, MWC champion New Mexico lost in the first round to Harvard, and the rest of the league struggled as well.

Unfortunately for fans of the MWC, there is no reason to expect any of those factors to repeat this year. Home teams probably won’t win at a disproportionate rate. Wyoming won’t be dominant and then bad. And the bottom of the league will be bad again. (With San Jose St. coming aboard and Air Force rebuilding behind a bunch of 2-star recruits, a drop-off at the bottom of the league is almost unavoidable). Five teams might be in the conversation for the NCAA tournament, but a year after dominating the regular season, it wouldn’t be out of the question for the league to get only two bids.

Here is my lineup-based prediction model's projections for the league in 2013-14:

For column heading definitions, click here.

New Mexico: New Mexico returns four starters (Alex Kirk, Cameron Bairstow, Kendall Williams, and Hugh Greenwood) from last year’s conference winning squad. And they added Cullen Neal who has only recently risen up into ESPNU Top 100. That starting lineup should be competitive with any team in the country. But the team has little proven depth. (Will Kansas transfer Merv Lindsay contribute?) And since this is Craig Neal’s first head coaching job, there are questions of whether he can lead a team to a league title in his first year. The MWC spends as much on coaching as the traditional power leagues, and opposing coaches will heavily scout the Lobos. Will Neal be ready?

Boise St.: I’ve seen a lot of people with Boise St. in their Top 25 and I understand the logic. This was a good team last year and they bring back 91% of their minutes from last season. But my model has them a little bit lower because there are still some real question marks. In particular, Boise St.’s primary offense was a 4-guard lineup last year. But a number of the guards they played simply weren’t very good. Mikey Thompson, Igor Hadziomerovic, and Joe Hanstad were big drains on the offense because of their turnovers and/or bad shooting. If I could say with confidence those three would be relegated to the bench this season, it would be a no-brainer to put Boise St. in the Top 25. But Boise St. isn’t bringing in any can’t miss prospects to ensure that this happens.

Realistically the team will probably hope to get more out of some of its forwards. JUCO transfer James Webb, red-shirt freshman Edmund Dukulis, incoming freshman Nick Duncan, and seldom-used Darrious Hamilton or Vukasin Vujovic will probably get a chance to play more post minutes next year. If they can earn time, the taller lineup might help improve the defense some. But none of them have particularly high expectations either.

Leon Rice is doing a fantastic job, and the expectation for this team should absolutely be the NCAA tournament. But on paper, there are still too many lineup questions to view Boise St. as a clear Top 25 team.

Utah St.: Most people probably won’t have Utah St. this high because of how they ended their tenure in the WAC conference. To finish  11-7 in that league which really only had three good teams was pretty disappointing. But that completely overlooks what happened last year. In mid-January, Utah St. lost its too most efficient players in Preston Medlin and Kyisean Reed. And both were relatively high usage players too, they weren’t just role players. Those type of injuries are devastating at that point in the season and Utah St. could never really recover in conference play.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like Reed will be back. He went through senior day festivities and I haven’t heard any news that he will apply for an extra hardship year. But the return of Medlin from injury should instantly upgrade the offense.

And Utah St. is once again very mature. The team can put together an 8-man lineup with one sophomore, two juniors, and five seniors. The fact that the team doesn’t need to break in a lot of freshmen should help the offense click. Add to that the fact that Stew Morrill has been one of the most under-rated offensive coaches in the nation, and Utah St. will be good again. They might not win the MWC this year, but they will absolutely be close to the top.

UNLV: Click here for a more detailed preview of UNLV.

San Diego St.: JJ O’Brien and Xavier Thames are solid players. And I can write down a seven or eight player rotation for San Diego St. that sounds reasonably intimidating on paper.  But San Diego St. loses its two most important players in Chase Tapley and Jamaal Franklin. Both took a high volume of shots, played a ton of minutes, and were super efficient. (Departing senior DeShawn Stephens rarely shot, but he was very efficient too.) Losing players like that just isn’t a recipe for a better season. And San Diego St. had only the 36th best margin-of-victory last year. 

The recent addition of Tulane graduate transfer Josh Davis helps a lot. Davis was an unbelievably dominant forward without much help around him. And incoming freshman Dakarai Allen also has high expectations. But expecting those two to do better than Tapley and Franklin seems like a little bit of a stretch.

To truly make the NCAA tournament, San Diego St. is going to need more out of Winston Shepherd, Dwayne Polee, and James Johnson. All three were Top 100 recruits out of high school, but none of them has posted an ORtg above 100 yet. (And Johnson played a rather distressing four minutes per game last year.) Unless a couple of those players break out rather unexpectedly, San Diego St. will have a hard time making a fifth straight NCAA tournament.

Wyoming and Fresno St: The best thing you can say about Wyoming and Fresno St. is that they will probably be competitive defensively. Wyoming head coach Larry Shyatt has produced Top 100 defenses in back-to-back years. After how poorly Henry Schroyer’s defenses did over the previous four years, Shyatt at least has his team working hard. Similarly Rodney Terry orchestrated a remarkable defensive turnaround this least season. Fresno St.’s adjusted defense fell from 101.3 to 93.2.

Offensively, it is harder to be optimistic, but here are a couple of points on the two teams. In Wyoming’s case freshman Josh Adams was dreadful. Larry Shyatt clearly thought he was valuable giving him major minutes throughout the season, but Adams was a terrible shooter. Adams will be better as a sophomore, but he was only a 2-star player, and it isn’t clear that he has a very high ceiling. If Wyoming would limit Adams shot selection, the offense could take more of a bump.

In Fresno St.’s case, prized recruit Robert Upshaw was also awful, but he was hampered by injuries all year. If he is fully healthy from the start of the year, he could improve significantly. And the addition of elite transfer recruit Cezar Guerrero should also help. But with few above average efficiency players returning, Fresno St.’s offense will still likely be below average.

Nevada: David Carter has proven to be a poor defensive coach. And after making the tournament four years in a row, Nevada now hasn’t been to the tournament in six years. I feel bad for Deonte Burton (and to a lesser extent Jerry Evans). Burton is a fabulous PG, but he just doesn’t have a lot of quality offensive players to feed the ball to. And with the team exerting no effort on defense, Nevada won’t score enough points to win consistently.

Colorado St.: Colorado St. is poised for a hard fall this year. It isn’t just that Colorado St. loses 5 starters. Returning only 27% of the team’s minutes is bad enough. But the team also loses all its high volume shooters. The returning players like Daniel Bejarano and Gerson Santo were efficient last year, but they also deferred a lot in last year’s offense. The model is skeptical they can maintain their efficiency when asked to shoot more. That is why the model projects Colorado St. to have one of the biggest offensive collapses of any team in the country this off-season. The team also doesn’t add any can’t miss recruits. The team adds two JUCO transfers, which should help, and Dwight Smith will be back from an injury. But with all that roster attrition, the best case scenario is probably a season like Vanderbilt had last year.

Air Force: Dave Pilipovich did a fantastic job in his first season with the team, but Air Force is a very hard place to win. To return just one-third of the team’s minutes from last year and try to create a winning team with only 2-star recruits is a major undertaking.

San Jose St.: San Jose St. returns only four scholarship players from last year. When you don’t have enough quality upperclassman at San Jose St., the odds of winning are slim to none.

And now the math based reason that the RPI favors conferences where the home team wins. (Again I am just lifting this idea from Andy Glockner.)

Imagine there are just three games, a neutral site non-conference game which the power conference team wins, and then two conference games home and road, which are split. Under the RPI formula, the neutral site win counts as 1 win. But how the W-L split is counted will depend on where the win and loss happen. If the home team wins both, the weight is 0.6, if the road team wins both, the weight is 1.4. So if the home team wins both, the W-L record will be 1.6 and 0.6. If road teams win, the W-L record will be 2.4 and 1.4. The former works out to a 73 percent winning percentage, the later works out to a 63 percent winning percentage. Even though the venues, opponents, and W-L records are the same, the RPI gives higher credit to the league where the home team dominates.

Amusingly, in bad leagues that don’t win many non-conference games, the RPI ratings will be higher if the road teams win more conference games.

INDIANAPOLIS – Around the Miami Heat, Udonis Haslem always has commanded a unique respect, an admiration and gratefulness for the way he embraces sacrificing himself. One after another, Roy Hibbert and David West have took turns punishing the Heat’s frontcourt, and Haslem’s 6-foot-8 frame rendered him mostly overpowered. There needed to be a price paid for the Pacers’ rugged play inside, Haslem believed.

So when Haslem addressed his Heat teammates privately on Sunday, they all absorbed his message: Desperation and a keen remembrance of how Erik Spoelstra showed them the Pacers could be exploited. Across the first two games of these Eastern Conference finals, Indiana suffocated whatever penetration Miami made – suffocated its role players.

Mostly, Hibbert and West had shown clear disrespect toward Haslem’s shooting ability, leaving them free to roam the paint, free to harness LeBron James. Spoelstra and his coaching staff spent considerable time on the off day Saturday pointing out all the open shots that could have went to Haslem and Chris Bosh in Game 2.

And the coach’s plan of exploitation was this: Attack. Draw. Pass.

James and Dwyane Wade did it over and over in Game 3, piling up 11 assists between them, and Haslem delivered 17 points and seven rebounds to punctuate the Heat’s 114-96 win for a 2-1 series lead. Haslem drained six jumpers, and he kept taking hits – kept overcoming them – from Hibbert and West.

“They swallow you up with their size when you get to the basket, so you have to have people who can withstand, people who can shoot the ball,” Haslem told RealGM late Sunday. “It’s something we talked about going into the game. We saw on film that we could take advantage of it. Sometimes, it’s rebounding and defense. [Sunday] it was knocking down shots.

“I was sprinting to my spots. I credit my guys for finding me in my spots and I shot it with confidence.”

Still, Haslem refused to take the majority of credit for his shooting and rebounding. His jumpers were all a byproduct of James and Wade and others, Haslem says, and as far as his rebounding, it was Bosh’s box outs. Nevertheless, the way Haslem deflects praise – the way he matches the physicality of bigger, stronger players – is what endears him among teammates.

“He’s the heartbeat of our team,” James said.

“[Haslem] is all heart,” Wade said.

For the Heat, Game 3 was their sharpest halftime of the playoffs, a 70-point outburst in which James put on a posting up clinic. Paul George went toe to toe, shot for shot with James over two games in Miami, but he had no resistance when LeBron locked into putting his back to the basket and outmuscling the thinner George on Sunday. It was too easy, too often: Dribble up court, pound the ball into James on the left block, and the Pacers were at his mercy.

When the Heat relinquished the homecourt edge in this conference final, Haslem knew they weren’t going to run from the opportunity to regain desperation, but rather run toward it. Wade made progress in critical stretches, and the Heat appear stable with the likelihood his knees are as healthy as they’re going to be, receiving treatment around the clock.

“It’s the first time in a while we truly played like ourselves,” Shane Battier said.

No one more than Haslem. At 32, Haslem understands this postseason – this series, in particular – has tested his body. Hibbert and West will continue trying to impose their physicality on the Heat, a tiring challenge Haslem has embraced.

“I love to compete, love the challenge. I just have to rise to the occasion,” Haslem said in an emptying locker room. “You’ve got size and height with Hibbert, and you’ve got strength and power with West. They both give me different challenges.

“A sense of desperation, we felt like our backs were against the wall. We needed to get this win – by any means necessary.”

All around the Heat, Haslem still has players heeding his words, still intently listening. Spoelstra wisely showed his players footage of situations when Haslem had been left open on the perimeter, left alone by a Pacers defense clogging the paint to guard drives by James.

As he sat in the corner of the locker room, ready to bite into his postgame meal, Haslem nodded knowingly, that he understood those shots would come his way Sunday. Three points combined in his past two games, and still no one around Udonis Haslem was surprised about the barrage of jumpers that happened next.

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