Three Things to Watch in Game 7: Miami and Charlotte Edition

The Miami Heat and Charlotte Hornets have streaked to a series-deciding Game 7, set to tip at 1 ET on Sunday afternoon. Both teams have second-round merits, but as is always the case with these sorts of close calls, the slightest edge could make the difference in sending one team home for the summer. We summarized three edge-creating options in the hours before Game 7:

1. Free throw attempts

The Hornets average 28 freebie attempts per game, which is certainly not an outsized amount and not all that more than Miami’s run of 21.3 a game. The Heat, though, are chaffing at the fact that reserve Charlotte guard Jeremy Lin has taken 38 in the series and that Kemba Walker (at 33 through six games) isn’t far behind. Dwyane Wade, the man who once shot 22 free throws in a pivotal NBA Finals game, has taken just as many in the playoffs thus far.

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Miami coach Erik Spoelstra and Hornet head man Steve Clifford both come from the Pat Riley family tree, which means they’ve done all they can within un-fineable reason to attempt to sway things both through the media and off the record. This hardly matters in the moment, though, when someone like Goran Dragic either collides into Cody Zeller, or on the other end Dragic sees himself pushing the bounds of verticality in the face of Lin’s driving man bun.

Referees Ed Malloy, Bill Kennedy, and Mike Callahan worked in the Kennedy Administration are a top-notch and veteran crew who will not be swayed by Miami’s home setting. That, in turn, does not guarantee anything for the Hornets, who will have to keep the pressure on Miami’s aging backcourt of Dragic and Wade.

2. Big to start, big to finish

Charlotte’s season hang on a vine at the point coach Clifford decided to put Frank Kaminsky in the starting lineup for Game 3. Kaminsky and his bigger teammates had struggled terribly in the first two games to cover Luol Deng, a small forward who has historically played brilliant basketball while working as a power forward even when his stretch three-pointers weren’t hitting. Over the first two games, though, those long-range hits were falling.

Somehow, the Clifford’s mad hat idea worked, and the Hornets have won three of four games since. Along the same lines, Miami has taken Amar’e Stoudemire out of its own rotation, and re-introduced Josh McRoberts and Udonis Haslem to the nationally televised world. Kaminsky and Cody Zeller saw significant play down the stretch of Game 6, Haslem took in spot duty, scoring center Al Jefferson was a mainstay for Charlotte, while Miami center Hassan Whiteside was only a bit player down the stretch of the Heat’s season-saving win.

How each coach juggles these sorts of tall options could decide the fate of what has unexpectedly become the most entertaining series of the first round.

3. Three-point shooting

It might seem a bit much to pin a season’s lot of work, seven months and 89 games’ worth of play, on some random statistical noise, but that’s sometimes how these things work out.

Luol Deng helped push the Heat to an early (and what appeared to be dominant) series lead on the back of his 11-17 run from behind the arc in the first three games of this series. Dwyane Wade helped Bush push this series to a deciding game with a pair of clutch three-pointers late in Game 6, jokingly comparing himself to Kyle Korver in the wake of hitting his first shot from long range since the night many of you may have put up your Christmas tree.

Toss in an underwhelming run behind the arc from Kemba Walker, and the “no-no-no-no-YES!”–stylings of Courtney Lee late in Game 5, and you have a series that has been partially run by those who test hot and cold from the outside. Neither coach will attempt to make the shot a feature in the catalogue, but when a play breaks down and the ball bounces out, an entire season could be on the line.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops