SAN ANTONIO — Having spent a couple of days seemingly only getting asked about leg cramps and how to recover from them, LeBron James and the Miami Heat were pretty much just joking around about it Friday.
Such when LeBron was asked how he could test out his body and recovery before Game 2.
“The conditions are nowhere near extreme as they was, unless I decide to run from here to the hotel, that’s the only way I would be able to test my body out,” he said with a laugh.
“We anticipate we will play in a very cool gym,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We will have to deal with that now. I don’t know if guys will be wearing tights under their shorts and long-sleeved shirts, I don’t know.”
LeBron cramping up and missing almost all of the final seven minutes of Game 1 — and the Heat falling apart in that time, losing to the Spurs 110-95 — has been the story line for a couple days. LeBron did go through some practice with the Heat on Saturday
“The soreness is starting to get out,” LeBron said. “I’m feeling better than I did yesterday and with another day, I should feel much better tomorrow…
“(My plans are) A lot of treatment, icing, stretching, obviously I’m going to get some cardio in today, get the heart rate going. A lot of fluids, kind of get my body above the curve.”
How Hard was Spoelstra going to push him in practice?
“Whatever he’s willing to do. It’s not going to be a Bahamas-like training camp practice today…” Spoelstra said, referencing the Heat’s training camp this season in the Bahamas. “Yesterday was all about rest and hydration and building his body back up. Thankfully we had that extra day.”
What the Heat were really focusing on is taking the steps to even this series — the last 12 times they have lost a playoff game they have bounced back with a win. They have yet to lose a playoff series in the “big three era” after losing Game 1 of a series.
“We need to do what we do better and harder,” Spoelstra said trying to talk around adjustments. “They make it tough with their passing and, you know, getting into the paint with their rolls and spreading you out with three-point shooters. So we need to do that better, there is no question about it.”
Chris Bosh put it this way.
“Coach didn’t want to get too much into it, but mainly on defense and on offense the way they flattened us out, things we could have done better, make simpler passes, simple cuts that would have opened up the floor a little bit for us, and we could have gotten into our game,” Bosh said. “Especially those last three and a half minutes, we could have done a much better job. We look at those and try to capitalize and fix those mistakes for Game 2.”
They had an extra day to think about all of that. And rest.
