King Kaufman's Sports Daily

With Wade hurting, the Heat need a miracle to knock off the Pistons. Plus: "Cinderella Man" author reviews the movie.

Jun 6, 2005 | The Miami Heat and Detroit Pistons have come down to a Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals Monday night in Florida, and I couldn't be in a better position to be both right and wrong in predicting the outcome.

At the start of the "season," I picked the Pistons to win the Eastern Conference. At the start of the real season, the playoffs, I picked the Heat to win the Eastern Conference.

At the start of this series, I stayed with the Heat because that seemed like the right thing to do with my "official" pick. The Eastern Conference playoffs had gone exactly as I'd prognosticated -- I'm not bragging; the first two rounds of the NBA playoffs are highly predictable -- so it seemed wrong to switch in midstream.

But really I thought the Pistons could win, and said so.

And so, whatever happens Monday night, I'll be able to say, "See? Told you." The whole point of this business is to be able to say, "See? Told you," even if you haven't, and even if you've also told them the exact opposite.

It's a good business.

So for the Heat to prove me right -- or wrong, depending on your point of view -- they're going to need a hell of a game from Shaquille O'Neal. The problem with that is that Shaq was last seen being praised to the heavens for a good but hardly Shaq-like 24-point, 13-rebound outing in Game 6, in which the Heat got blasted 91-66.

That's the sort of game that will do when Dwyane Wade is going bananas, such as Game 2, when O'Neal had 17 and 10 and Wade poured in 40 points. The Heat won by six.

It'll do even when Wade is merely human as long as everything else breaks right. That happened in Game 5, when O'Neal had 20 and five and Wade only had 15 points and four assists before leaving with an injury. But the Heat won because Udonis Haslem and Damon Jones played about as well as they ever play, and Rasual Butler had his best game of the playoffs by far, and the Pistons played lousy.

Bad bet to think that's all going to happen again, especially that last thing, so the Heat's best hope is for Dwyane Wade to go bananas.

The problem with that is that Wade might not play.

Next Page: He'll play, but will he contribute? Plus: Cinderella fan

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