2012 Celtics could've beaten that young OKC squad if not pushed them to 7..
The 2011 Bulls were a better defensive team than Miami was that year, and they had the depth to match Dallas. I don't think Dallas torches that Bulls team like they did to Miami. Not to mention the great X Factor in that series being LeBron's disappearing act. A deeper more well balanced bulls team wouldn't have struggled as much because of one scorer being off(ala Miami in 2011). Dirk would've gone off on all bulls defenders, but I don't think Jason Kidd, JJ Barera, and Jason Terry go off on that bulls defense like they did to Miami's defense.
I don’t think Boston had the legs to run with Oklahoma City in 2012. They spent the whole playoffs running on fumes and couldn’t get by Miami even with Wade hurt and Bosh essentially missing the first 5 games of the series. It’s tough to see that changing against a healthy thunder team even as young as they were.
As for 2011 with the bulls, yeah they had the best defense that season, but the gap between them and the heat was minor. Maybe Dallas doesn’t light the scoreboard up like they did the last two games of the series, but they pulled off wins in games 2 and 4 while shooting badly from distance. Miami struggled and LeBron in particular because the heat couldn’t stretch the floor. James scored so little not because he shot poorly, but because the heat couldn’t get any good looks for him so they had to keep moving the ball. He actually shot better from the field against Dallas than against Chicago. They struggled because Dallas ran a zone defense designed to clog the paint at the expense of leaving shooters open, which worked because Miami didn’t have enough players to shoot from distance at a high enough rate to force Dallas to change their scheme. Chicago had a similar problem.
For the whole conference finals, only 2 bulls players (brewer & Gibson) shot above 42% from the field and as a team they shot 31% from distance. Deng was the only bulls player to shoot above 30% from distance while taking more than 5 threes on the series. Rose and Bogans were the second and third best shooters that series going 7-30 and 6-20 from deep. Given how poor the floor spacing would have been for them, this would give Dallas similar free reign to drop into a zone around Rose, and he didn’t have a good enough jumper to burn them with any consistency that season, as he shot just 36% on his jumpers that year.
Their big men would likely struggle too, given how they looked against Miami’s front court which was terrible aside from Bosh. Boozer shot poorly (41% from the field only taking 2’s) and Noah shot even worse, at just 32% from the field. If they struggled with Joel Anthony guarding the rim, how would they handle Tyson Chandler? Maybe the Mavericks’ shooters don’t hit as efficiently as they did since there wasn’t a Mike Bibby in the bulls rotation to get picked on defensively, but the bulls couldn’t get by the Heat with really only two players for Miami having a good series and essentially running an 8 man rotation the last 4 games of the series. I don’t see how they’d slow down everyone sufficiently, especially considering how well Dallas moved the ball. I still see Dallas winning in 6.
