Closer look: Is Miami playing better now?

In the run-up to Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals, there seems to be this universally-accepted notion that Miami is far better now than it was in the regular season.

I suppose there’s a good reason for this. Boston looked pretty good while sweeping New York in the first round, then lost in 5 games to the Heat.

So maybe the win over the Celtics was worthy of a collapse-on-the-court celebration. As everyone knows, Boston played with a one-armed point guard for the final 2 ½ games. Rajon Rondo, arguably the Celtics most important player, suffered a gruesome dislocated elbow early in Game 3, but kept playing.

Boston also had no inside game to speak of, during that Miami series. Maybe that’s a credit to the Heat’s defense. Maybe it’s time for Kevin Garnett to start taking those Shaquille O’Neal mid-season naps so he’s got something left for the playoffs.

In plenty of ways, the Heat looks the same as it has all season. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade are playing like superstars, although both shots better than 50 percent in the regular season and are below that mark in the playoffs.

Chris Bosh is still the wobbly third wheel. Against the Celtics, he averaged 12.8 points, 10.2 rebounds and shot 40.4 percent from the field. Will Bosh deliver in the hostile atmosphere at the United Center? Well, anything's possible.

The Heat found a reliable 3-point shooter in James Jones, who’s shooting 44 percent in the playoffs. As a team, though, Miami shot .370 from 3-point land in the regular season and is at .316 during the playoffs, mostly because Wade (25 percent) and Mike Bibby (23.5) have been way down.

The big breakthrough, supposedly, is center Joel Anthony, who is playing roughly 12 minutes more per game in the playoffs. He’s clearly the Heat’s best defensive big man, but that was obvious in October. Why it took him so long to earn playing time is anyone’s guess, although the first guess is he can't score.

In the three games against the Bulls, Anthony played more than any other Miami center, so that lineup is nothing new. The Heat wanted no part of Zydrunas Ilgauskas trying to stop Derrick Rose at the rim. He played 22 minutes total vs. the Bulls.

Erick Dampier started two games against the Bulls and now he’s out of the rotation completely.

The Heat averaged 102.1 points during the regular season, and is at 94.7 in the playoffs. Miami averaged 20 assists per game in the regular season, 15.6 in the playoffs.

One area where the Heat is doing well is a +61 rebound margin. Philadelphia and Boston were both near the bottom in rebound percentage, while the Bulls ranked No. 1 in the regular season.

Another success story is free throws. Miami is averaging close to 30 free throw attempts in the playoffs, slightly more than the regular season pace, while allowing just 19.3 per game. That's plus-104 in free throw attempts in just 10 games.

Like I said before, if the Heat drew Indiana in the first round, the Pacers probably would have finished some of those games with four players on the floor. The Pacers were allowed to get rough against the Bulls, while Miami’s stars paraded to the foul line against the Sixers.

During the regular season, the Heat never really changed. When the schedule got tough, it would lose to good teams and the sky was falling. Then the schedule would ease up, Miami would blow out a bunch of bad teams and everything was wonderful again in South Beach.

The Heat blew out Philadelphia just once in five games. If Boston’s one-armed point guard had made an uncontested lay up in the final minute of Game 4, that series would have been tied 2-2 and might still be going.

Is Miami really better now than it was in the regular season, when it struggled to beat good teams and was bad in close games? The numbers haven’t changed much, so it all depends on what kind of power rating you assign to Boston.