<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">It isn't just the math or the historical weight. To have a realistic chance, the Heat must now win three consecutive games in Miami against a team that seems almost unbeatable. Not two of three. All three. Against a team that won the first two Finals games by a combined 24 points. (After winning the last regular-season meeting by 36). And this with Udonis Haslem having sustained a shoulder injury Sunday. You have heard of ''matchup problems?'' The Heat evidently matches up with the Mavs about like stripes go with plaids. Riley built this Heat team to get past Detroit and out of the Eastern Conference, which it did, with the presumption methodical San Antonio would then be the Finals foe. Drawing Dallas instead has showed, for Riley, the kind of nightmare Stephen King writes about. The Mavericks have shown the talent, quickness, youthfulness and depth to seemingly counteract all of Miami's strengths. They had the defense to limit Dwyane Wade to 23 points Sunday on 6-of-19 shooting. They had the defensive strategy to surround Shaquille O'Neal with a moat of Mavericks and reduce Shaq to a stunning nonfactor: Five points, total, the poorest game by far in a legendary career. O' Neal is 2 of 16 in free throws in this series -- historic ineptitude. ''I've got 350 pounds on my mind,'' was the last thing Mavs coach Avery Johnson said in his pregame news conference. But that was before his team made Shaq utterly disappear, once thought the unlikeliest trick in all of sports. The Big Fella did not play in the fourth quarter; the Mavs effectively have erased him -- to a degree that even a 20-point game from Antoine Walker and a nice 11 points off the bench from Alonzo Mourning could not make amends. ''He's frustrated,'' Walker said of O'Neal. Who on the Heat wouldn't be? Shouldn't be? Shaq sitting the entire fourth quarter when not in foul trouble is a rarity. Bizarre. Such is the liability he is on the free-throw line. ''It was crazy, you know, especially when he's not in foul trouble,'' Wade said. ``You know, you wonder why. We've got to find a way to get our [big guys] to be more dominant.'' Miami got outshot, outrebounded and, to hear Riley tell it, maybe plainly outworked, too. ''This game was about another team's competitiveness and energy,'' the coach said. ``Their energy and their effort far surpassed ours.'' Is Miami getting outcoached as well? That's tougher to say. But Riley has not found a way yet to ''let Shaq be Shaq,'' or to exploit Dallas' strategy of smothering O'Neal and leaving others unmarked. Likewise, Dallas' young Avery Johnson has been brilliant in manipulating his advantageous depth and in mixing coverages against Shaq.</div> Source
