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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Heat out to finish off Pacers in Game 6

A victory would be a repeat of last season

Tim Reynolds Associated Press

MIAMI – Standing on the cusp of the NBA Finals has tended to agree with the Miami Heat in each of the last two seasons. When the Heat have gotten a game away from the title round, they’ve finished the task as quickly as possible.

And here they are again.

A third straight Eastern Conference title is now just one win away for the reigning champions, though if the way this series has gone so far is an accurate indicator, that win will hardly come easily.

The Heat will visit the Indiana Pacers tonight, leading the best-of-seven East finals 3-2 and in position to close out their new rivals on their own floor for the second straight season.

“We’re desperate, too,” Heat forward and four-time NBA MVP LeBron James said Friday. “We’re desperate to get back to the NBA Finals.

“So both teams are desperate in their own sense of they’re trying to keep their season alive and we’re trying to advance.”

The teams have alternated wins and losses through the first five games, and if that trend holds, then it’s the Pacers’ turn to prevail today and send the series back to Miami for a winner-goes-to- the-finals Game 7 on Monday night.

If the Heat – who have won each of their last six potential series-closeout games, including the 2011 and 2012 East finals – win, then the championship round against the San Antonio Spurs will begin in Miami on Thursday.

The Pacers saw their season end a year ago on their home floor, at Miami’s hand, in Game 6 of a second-round series. So Indiana’s biggest source of motivation today may be the desire to avoid the indignity of watching Miami advance in Indianapolis for a second straight season.

“Game 6 will really determine how much we’ve grown, because we’ve been in the same ditch, I guess, being in the same predicament,” Pacers star Paul George said. “Going 2-2, losing in Miami, then coming back home and losing at home. So we’ll see where we’re at.”

Even down 3-2 against a team that hasn’t lost back-to-back games since early January, the Pacers still have plenty of confidence, and it starts with a coach who came into the series insisting his club had genuine belief that it could knock off the champions.

“It’s not just false talk,” Indiana coach Frank Vogel said. “There’s a reason I’m confident. I like to tell these guys that I’m not an optimist. That’s what my image is. I’m a realist. And when I look around at what I see in the room when I’m talking to this team, and what I see on the court, and the level of execution that we’re capable of … it gives me real confidence in this basketball team.”