Bulls vs. Heat Eastern finals: What to watch

One big question for the Heat: How will they guard Derrick Rose? (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Chicago swept Miami in the regular season, but the Heat have already eliminated one team (Boston) that won its regular-season series against them. Chicago won the three matchups by eight points combined; two of those games were in Chicago, LeBron James missed one of them with an ankle injury and Chris Bosh sat out down the stretch of that same game after Omer Asik’s terribly irresponsible hustle (kidding!) accidentally resulted in the Heat forward’s sustaining an ankle injury.

In other words, I wouldn’t give Chicago an edge based on its 3-0 whitewash of Miami in the regular season. This should be a closely fought series between two of the league’s top five defensive teams. Miami’s offense is clearly better than Chicago’s, but the Bulls’ defense is so good that it should keep them in any game against any opponent.

Here are key things to watch in what should be a fun series (which begins Sunday night in Chicago):

• Guarding Derrick Rose

Rose had two good games and one so-so outing against Miami. The easiest thing to do when looking at this series is to howl about how easily Rose is going to blow by Mike Bibby. But here’s the thing: The league MVP can blow by anyone, and while some point-guard defenders are good enough to make things a little more difficult for him, Miami’s help defense will determine how efficiently Rose can score and dish in this series.

To wit, Chicago’s ball-handlers (mostly Rose) hit just 12-of-33 shots on pick-and-roll plays in those three games against Miami, according to the stat-tracking service Synergy Sports, and the Heat’s mobile big-man combination of Bosh and Joel Anthony is one of the league’s best at thwarting pick-and-rolls. How the Heat do it against Rose will be interesting. So far in the playoffs, we’ve seen Indiana trap Rose aggressively well beyond the three-point line, while the Hawks mostly chose to have the big man defending the screener sag back and track Rose across the foul line area. The Heat are good at both, though they have excelled at blitzing the ball-handler and making it difficult for him to find passing lanes.

Either strategy will create brief openings, and Rose has improved at keeping his dribble, reading the defense and finding holes. Executing against Miami’s speedy rotations will be the hardest test of his career.

The wild card here is obviously whether — and how much — the Heat will use Dwyane Wade and even James to defend Rose. Doing so forces Miami’s point guard to defend a bigger player, but two of Chicago’s shooting guards (Keith Bogans and Ronnie Brewer) are minimal offensive threats, and Mario Chalmers, in particular, should be able to track either of them. Bulls swingman Kyle Korver is another story, because he can shoot over smaller players. Giving James the assignment shifts Wade onto Luol Deng, who has a four-inch height advantage.

Expect Miami to mix it up but stay mostly within its normal pick-and-roll defense, among the league’s stingiest.

Dwyane Wade and the Heat face a stiff test against Chicago's championship-level defense. (Charles Trainor Jr/Miami Herald/MCT via Getty Images)

• Solving the league’s best defense

The Heat’s offense failed against Chicago by almost any measure. Miami shot just 44 percent in the regular-season series, put up a points-per-possession mark below the league’s average in all three games and scored at a rate that would have ranked last in the league in two of those games, according to Hoopdata. Miami averaged about five fewer free-throw attempts than normal, connected on just 57.5 percent on shots at the rim (compared to 67.5 percent for the season) and snagged very few offensive rebounds.

Worst of all: Miami’s offense devolved often into isolation plays, and those plays failed badly. Over those three games, Miami devoted a hair more than 20 percent of its offense to isolations, far above its season average of about 12 percent, according to Synergy. Miami, overall, was the league’s most efficient isolation team; against Chicago, however, it averaged just 0.67 points per possession on those isolations, a horrid number that would have ranked at the bottom of the league.

This was a total systemic failure, though it showed signs of reversing itself in the last of those three games, when Miami isolated less and went through the post more.

The Heat have gone through a fitful growth process on offense. The stars have learned, gradually, to move without the ball and play off each other in motion-based sets. The Heat will have to be more committed than ever to that kind of play in order to win this series.

• Miami’s funky lineups 

This is almost inseparable from the question of who defends Rose. Miami has gone regularly to two types of unconventional lineups:

1) Small lineups, in which LeBron James plays power forward.

2) Lineups that feature no traditional point guard.

The small groups present a dilemma for every team: Go small along with the Heat or stick to regular lineups that feature two big men? Most teams — including Chicago — have gone the latter route, and that brings with it the complication of finding a smaller player one of your big men can guard without compromising the overall defense. That player is most often James Jones, a spot-up shooter someone like Joakim Noah can track. But in the playoffs, Miami has been more aggressive running Jones off screens in this situation, forcing the big-man defender to try to track Jones all over the court. The Heat have gotten several important open looks this way.

On the flip side, the Bulls had success early in the season with small lineups featuring Deng at power forward, but they have mostly gone away from that. Will we see it again here?

The Heat lineups that lack a point guard might be an even more dangerous weapon. They allow Wade to defend Rose without the dilemma of hiding Bibby or Chalmers somewhere else, and they force Rose to defend either Wade or a much taller wing player. Rose guarded Wade in this situation on several key possessions of the final Chicago-Miami game; the Heat responded by running pick-and-rolls with Wade, forcing the Bulls to send even more help than usual to contain those plays. Watch for this.

• Boozer vs. Bosh: Who is ready? 

We won’t see this one-on-one matchup all that much, at least when Miami has the ball, because the Bulls will likely give Noah the bulk of the Bosh assignment, as they typically do against elite pick-and-pop threats. But whichever team gets more from its oft-maligned power forward will have a huge edge in this series.

Bosh’s 1-of-18 performance in the second game between the teams might have been the lowest moment of his career. Noah’s ability to body him up in the post and contest pick-and-pop jumpers clearly bothered Bosh.

As a team, the Heat attempted just six shots from the post combined in their first two matchups against Chicago. The Heat also got very little from the roll man on pick-and-roll plays against the Bulls, averaging just 0.67 points per possession when the roll man finished the play. That mark would have ranked last in the league by a long shot, according to Synergy.

As for Boozer, we all know his performance in the playoffs has been shaky, and he’s recovering from turf toe. It will be interesting to see which Heat big man defends Boozer. When the Heat have the ball, you can count on them going after Boozer on pick-and-roll plays, even though the Chicago power forward will guard Miami’s offensively challenged centers. The Heat know Boozer will drop back on pick-and-rolls, conceding mid-range jump shots and opening driving lanes.

• The Korver issue

Watch any Rose drive from the Chicago-Atlanta series when Korver was not on the court, and chances are pretty strong you’ll see at least four Atlanta defenders surround Rose when he’s in or near the paint. And even then, Rose will have few — if any — clear passing lanes.

The Bulls’ biggest weakness is a lack of perimeter shooting, and when Korver isn’t on the floor, Chicago’s players tend to get bunched up around the paint, making it easy for defenses to both load up on Rose and stay near passing lanes. Deng is really the only Chicago starter consistently good at cutting in ways that give Rose a target.

All of this changes with Korver on the floor, which is why Chicago’s offense has scored at a ridiculously efficient rate when he plays. The problem, of course, is that Korver has had the opposite effect on Chicago’s defense, and the Bulls have scrambled to find places to put him on that end. That became an issue in the second round when Atlanta played Joe Johnson, Jeff Teague and Jamal Crawford together.

Obviously, the Bulls do not want Korver defending Wade or James. That leaves either the point guard (Bibby or Chalmers) or the Jones/Mike Miller assignment when Miami goes without a point guard. Korver should be fine with the latter, and Bibby shouldn’t present much of a problem. Chalmers is quick enough to present issues, but he’s rarely a featured ball-handler unless he has it with the shot clock running down. Teams have been known to abandon their offense simply to attack Korver. The Bulls might be fine if Miami falls into that same temptation, because a Chalmers isolation is preferable than anything involving Wade or James.

Regardless, the Bulls are going to need Korver’s shooting in this series to space the floor.

• The offensive rebounding balance

Chicago, one of the league’s best at getting second-chance opportunities, grabbed a very high percentage of available offensive rebounds against Miami in the regular season. The downside of crashing the offensive glass is the risk of giving up fast-break baskets, and Miami thrives in transition. The Heat’s fast-break game was the only part of its offense that held up against Chicago; Miami shot 21-of-29 on fast-break chances, according to Synergy, and exceeded its average points per possession on fast breaks — an average that was the highest in the league.

Chicago will have to find the right balance here.

• An insane wild card

We saw the Heat use a zone defense briefly against Philadelphia in the first round, and it flummoxed the shooting-challenged 76ers. The Heat haven’t tried zone since and rarely used it this season, and they broke it out in this situation only when Philadelphia was torching their man-to-man defense.

I wonder if we’ll see it at all in this series, even for just a few possessions. The Hawks experimented with it — out of weakness, again — and Chicago is a shaky outside shooting team. The Bulls do have the personnel to beat a zone, but it can be a challenge to organize that personnel when you’re note expecting one.

It’s unlikely to happen, but you never know.

• PREDICTION: The Heat have the two best players, but the Bulls have home-court advantage and a defense that will keep them in every game. Rose will test Miami’s defense in a way few players can, Noah can contain Bosh and Deng can at least make James work for his points. Boozer’s turf toe makes me anxious, but I’m pulling the trigger anyway. Bulls in seven.