Before Thursday night's Game 6, one of the primary topics of conversation in the Eastern Conference finals was how summarily Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers seemed to be outfoxing Miami Heat bench boss Erik Spoelstra. Through the first five games — and certainly from Game 2, which featured a brilliant Rajon Rondo performance and could very well have seen the Celtics steal a road split in an overtime nail-biter, though Game 5, which the C's won to take a 3-2 lead on Miami's home floor — it appeared to many observers that Rivers had Spoelstra's number, mixing up defensive schemes to slow the Heat offense and devising ways for Boston's sixth-worst regular season/seventh-worst postseason offense to get quality looks against a Heat defense that has been one of the league's stingiest since LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh teamed up under Spoelstra's guidance two years ago.

Coming into the series, it seemed to many — including me — that the talent, matchup and personnel advantages favored Miami too heavily for Boston to be able to make this a series. Clearly, I was wrong, as Boston headed into Thursday night with an opportunity to close Miami out at home at the TD Garden. That didn't happen, thanks to a sensational individual performance by LeBron James that knotted the series at three games apiece and set the stage for a winner-take-all Game 7. But it's unlikely LeBron will go for 40-15-5 in Game 7, if for no other reason than that nobody had done it in nearly 50 years before he did it on Thursday night.

If LeBron's not a superhero, what then for Miami? Can Spoelstra bridge the gap, take away Rivers' advantages and put Miami on an equal playing field with an experienced Boston team? Or is Spoelstra — as ESPN's Chris Broussard suggested — just "in over his head" in matching wits with Rivers in the NBA's final four?

Stan Van Gundy — now-former head coach of the Orlando Magic, a pro with eight years of NBA coaching experience and a veteran of three Eastern Conference finals with the Heat and Magic — seems like a pretty good guy to ask those questions, so Miami columnist and radio host Dan LeBatard did. The answers? Well, they fit very neatly with what you might expect from a famously prickly sort who's not presently employed by an NBA team and has all kinds of "don't give a crap" running through the family bloodstream.

From "The Dan LeBatard Show" on Miami radio station 790 The Ticket (via Eric Schmoldt at the indispensable Sports Radio Interviews):

What are your thoughts on Chris Broussard writing that Erik Spoelstra is in over his head?: "Well, there's a number of thoughts there. My first thought is that Chris Broussard has no knowledge of coaching and wouldn't know it if he saw it.

"My second thought is this: When he says they need somebody of the ilk of Phil Jackson, Pat Riley and Gregg Popovich, two thoughts on that, there aren't many guys of that ilk, period … and second of all, if that's the ilk they need, maybe they're not that damn good anyway. And my third thing is, in the game today, there aren't many guys as good as Erik Spoelstra. "And I would cite a couple things, rather than just an opinion. … That is the best defensive team that I have ever seen that doesn't have size. I've never seen an elite defensive team in the NBA, until this Miami team, that doesn't have size. To me, there has to be a hell of a lot of coaching in there."

OK, Stan, fair enough. But no one's ever questioned Spoelstra's defensive bona fides -- Miami was a strong unit on that end under his watch even before James and Bosh flew south, finishing 11th in defensive efficiency in the 2008-09 season and sixth in 2009-10.

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