2012 NBA Finals, Heat Vs. Thunder: Complete Coverage From SBNation.com

The Miami Heat just won the 2012 NBA Championship. But this club wasn’t built to win one championship -- LeBron James told us that himself. It was built to win multiple championships. So how can Miami repeat as the victors next season? We have a simple 10-step plan.

1. Get Dwyane Wade on the first flight to Germany. If you had to pick one 30-or-under NBA player who most desperately needs Kobe’s doctor to work some odd Frankenstein procedure on his knee, you’d pick Greg Oden. If you had to pick two, you’d pick Greg Oden and Dwyane Wade. Wade was great enough to matter, but bad enough at some points in the Indiana and Boston series to look like a major anchor. He needs to be healed.

MIAMI -- Half an inch of puddled beer and champagne had turned the plastic floors into a Slip N’ Slide, rap music blasted from the speakers, and as the Heat celebrated an NBA title and a hundred different people squeezed their way around the Miami locker room, you couldn’t help but get lost in the whole scene.

There was Pat Riley covered in champagne, lecturing a reporter, saying, “I’m not the coach of this team” and pointing to a grinning, beer and gatorade-soaked Erik Spoelstra a few feet away. There was Jalen Rose pushing his way through the crowd to find Juwan Howard at the center of the room, diving into his arms while someone shouted “Fab Five!” and showered them with champagne. There was Udonis Haslem, shirtless and standing on a chair off to the side with teammates at both sides, chugging champagne and nodding his head. A few feet away, Gabrielle Union, Dwyane Wade’s famous girlfriend, stood on a chair bobbing her head to “N***as in Paris.” Then back at the center, one of the players lifted his son on top of his shoulders, and they danced along, too.

As an athlete, I’ve heard the story of the scorpion and the frog on many occasions. It’s in some ways a relevant parable for those who play sports, so it’s come up at various points in my career. I happen to love this tale, probably because I learned it from someone who heard it delivered in person by Pat Riley, then the coach of the New York Knicks, during a pre-game speech. I always think about this story in that context -- as a tale propagated by Riles himself -- so it automatically has a type of slicked-back authenticity that I just can’t find anywhere else on the fable market, Aesop be damned.

Here’s a basic rundown: There’s a scorpion on the bank of a river, and he wants to get to the other side. He sees a frog, so he naturally asks if the frog will transport him across. The frog is skeptical, which should be expected, because while frogs might not be the brightest amphibians in the pond, they are nothing if not a street-smart and savvy bunch. So, the frog expresses his concern to the scorpion. “What if you sting me?” he asks. The scorpion assures the frog that this won’t happen. “I won’t sting you,” he says, “because if I do, we’ll both sink to the bottom of the river and die.” Eventually, the frog agrees and carries the scorpion into the water. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog, embedding his deathly venom, and as the two of them are sinking, the frog, shocked by what has happened, asks the scorpion, “Why?” The scorpion just smiles and says, “Because it’s my nature.” Then they drown and die, ending the story rather abruptly.

But what if it’s all more mundane than that? What if the NBA Finals is really just coming down to something as basic as rebounding?

Aggregate rebounding has been close as well, with Miami grabbing just eight more rebounds total in the four games, 160 to 152, a per game average of 40 rebounds to 38. But rebounding is the one line in the box score that has had a one-to-one correlation with the bottom line -- grab more boards and win the game, at least so far.

LeBron hit a crucial three-pointer when he came back for a brief time after he left the court to be worked on. The shot broke a 94-94 tie and helped continue a 12-4 run that ended the game in the Heat’s favor. LeBron fell one rebound short of a triple-double, scoring 26 points, dishing the ball out for 12 assists and grabbing nine rebounds.

The Heat can close out this series on Thursday at home when Game 5 takes place at AmericanAirlines Arena. ABC will have the game at 9 p.m. ET.

The lengths to which some people will go to avoid giving credit to the Miami Heat, starring the greatest player on the planet and some other neat athletes, is astounding. The Heat are up 2-1 over the Thunder, just as they were in the 2011 NBA Finals, with the prospect of two more games in South Beach. Winning both would clinch the series. Winning one would give Miami two opportunities to win one more in Oklahoma City to clinch. LeBron James has been overwhelmingly brilliant throughout the first three games; he’s only been matched in impact by Kevin Durant, who has absolutely risen to the challenge.

If you asked most neutral fans how they’d remember these Finals if it continues the way it’s gone, they’d note the epic LeBron-Durant duel, the excitement levels in crunch time, or how so much of the supporting cast (Shane Battier excepted) suffered at the hands of their opponents. Only observers with an angle would remember this series for its referees.

MIAMI -- “Every day we remind ourselves,” Chris Bosh said after the Miami Heat’s 91-85 Game 3 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder. “We think of that pain that we experienced last year. We carry that pain with us, we think about it every day, and that really helps us to succeed.”

The Heat learned from what happened last June, and this June they’re a better team. That’s definitely the storybook explanation you’ll hear if the Heat win two more games in the next 10 days. And I really really don’t want to buy into it, but it was pretty convincing Sunday night.

When the Oklahoma City Thunder traded Jeff Green for Kendrick Perkins in February 2011, the main draws were post defense and championship experience. Perk had helped the Boston Celtics win the 2008 NBA title, and earned a reputation as one of the nastiest interior defenders in the league. The Thunder were rawer than steak tartare, and relied on a very young Serge Ibaka and a crafty but undersized Nick Collison to protect the painted area. Perk was heralded as an immediate upgrade, someone who could help unseat the L.A. Lakers with their two inside kings from the Western throne.

That actually happened this season: The Thunder smoked L.A. in five games as the Lakers’ bigs were stunted by OKC’s big man corps, including starting center Perk.

The Oklahoma City Thunder have made a habit this postseason of falling behind big then coming back late. They did it against the Lakers in the second round. They did it against the Spurs in the Conference Finals. And they did it in Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat, when the Thunder fell behind by 13 in the second quarter only to rally for the win in an impressive second half.

Thursday night in Game 2 they were at again, this time digging an even deeper hole, and digging it faster as well. The Thunder missed 11 of their first 12 shots while committing four turnovers, and were behind 18-2 before they got their second basket with four and a half minutes left in the first quarter. The lead got all the way up to 17 a couple of minutes later, at which point Oklahoma City began the long, slow climb back into contention.

That’s the beautiful thing about this debate: the sides are evenly matched. For every argument in favor of Harden, there’s an equal for Ibaka. For every point in Ibaka’s column, there’s an equal point in Harden’s. Every time Harden has a great game, Ibaka matches it. Every time Ibaka makes a huge impact, Harden does the same.

But to me, Game 1 went beyond the individual performance to push Ibaka into the lead. It felt like a parable for the Thunder’s future and, Hell, the league’s future.

Much like it has all playoffs, the Thunder’s offense dominated, scoring 120 points per 100 possessions and especially dominating from the middle of the second quarter on. It’s natural for Spoelstra to believe this was some sort of coaching fault and, indeed, many of the blogosphere’s smartest scribes have tried to find that perfect adjustment to fix the problem.

But after re-watching the game, I have one piece of advice for Spoelstra. Instead of trying to search for a brand-new game plan, tell your players to execute the game plan better.

Fashion is stupid. It’s a benign but ugly tumor of human evolution: we went from having adequate fur to wearing sabertooth tiger pelts to hating people for wearing a hat we don’t like. We wear clothes for the simple reason that exposing our genitals in public is a crime, and sometimes because it’s cold. Every detail beyond that is a function of price and opinion.

This is not a screed against fashion -- I enjoy the fit of a custom-made suit just as much as the next person who could have bought something more useful. I merely want to recognize how uniquely ridiculous we are to care about clothes beyond their function and comfort, something that sportswriters have done more and more often as this NBA season (particularly the postseason) has progressed.

Yup, this is a big deal. Here at SB Nation, we’ve treated it as such with tons of previews and other coverage of the series. Here’s a complete recap of all the pieces that have been crafted from around the SB Nation network.

STARTING FIVE

LeBron James. Kevin Durant. Forget all the other factors, because this series is about those two superstars, writes Andrew Sharp.