1) Don't drop a stat on me with the unnecessarily dramatic statement "refute this (if you can)" and then, when I point out why the stat is of minimal relevance, get all uppity. You're giving an extremely small sample size a hell of a lot more importance than it deserves.
Sorry, I didn't realize there were a bunch of Pistons fans lurking. You admit to my point in your next paragraph.
2) You're right, the playoffs are different. But no, you cannot ignore the regular season.
As to the regular season, the Pistons were not as hot at the end. Over the last 40 games, the Heat and Pistons had the same record. So, you kind of can ignore the regular season. Especially, because like the little kid in airplane said to Kareem Abdul Jabbar, "My dad says that you only hustle during the playoffs." The Pistons hustled during the regular season, the Heat didn't.
3) That's a pretty fair predictor of how a team will perform in the playoffs. Otherwise, we could just mix up the seeds 1-8, match them up at random and see what happens. Detroit played like *** for games 3-6, and the first half of 7, I'll be the first to admit that. But to base an argument solely on basketball that's been played in the last two weeks is to say that the team that won 64 games all of a sudden has turned into a weak basketball team. In fact, they're a much better team than they showed in the last series, and the argument that "they played poorly against Cleveland, so they're cooked" just doesn't carry a lot of weight.
The fact is when everyone is playing just as hard as them, the competition is just as close. And I would also suggest that they may have wasted their best play on the regular season. The Heat certainly didn't do that.
4) Silly me. I forgot that the Phins, Marlins and Heat were a package deal. My bad.
No comment for fear of TOS violation.
@ that