Dave Hyde | South Florida Sun-Sentinel Writer

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Find out more at T-Mobile.com slash CY. That's S-E-E-W-H-Y. We're pleased to welcome Dave Hyde, who joins us following what's been a pretty exhausting run for him, too, as a columnist for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Right, let's start with this question. Just an easy one. A softball, if you will, Dave. What's the more unlikely, unbelievable run? Is it the Miami Heat or is it the Florida Panthers? I'm speechless on that because nobody in South Florida saw any of this coming when, you know, the Heat had to go to the second play-in game and they're down three points to Chicago in the last three minutes. And all of a sudden, here they are just running Boston off the court. And then you go from Miami to Broward and you've got the Florida Panthers who didn't make the playoffs to the second to last game of the season. And here they are running the best two teams in the East off in Boston and Toronto. And now they're up 2-0 on Carolina. Take your pick.

Chocolate or vanilla? Both of them are shocking down here for us. I've got to imagine that it's some pretty intense but also joyful moments for South Florida, really Florida sports fans because every other night it's either the Panthers or it's the Heat and wow, right now both teams sitting in pretty good positions when we're talking about championship series. Yeah, for the last 20 years the Heat had the big three and they won three titles.

So here's what I've written. It's like the movie Twins with Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Heat or Schwarzenegger? They look the part. Yeah, this is a little shocking but they've been in seven, I think seven of the last 13 Eastern Conference Finals.

We've seen this before. The Panthers are Danny DeVito. They've not been this far since 1996 for sure. They've been just a disaster of a franchise, really.

And now you see Jimmy Butler and Matthew Tkachuk are almost the same person. The fire, the top of their game and they're just carrying their teams on some level at this point in their seasons. Even though they do have the personnel that make them a tough out, the Heat to come through the play-in tournament, as you point out, they were on the ropes.

Then they have to face Milwaukee, which is the top team in the NBA. They make quick work of the Bucks. But knowing what you know about this team, what makes them so clutch? What makes them so mentally tough?

What makes them so impressive when their backs are against the wall, Dave? I'm writing a column about this for tomorrow, the Heat culture. They lead the league in the playoffs in things like deflections on defense and screen assists. All these analytics gave the Heat a 3% chance of winning the series. But there are all these bizarre stats out there that the Heat believe in that have somehow come into play. The undrafted players gave Vincent 29 points Sunday night in Game 3 and Duncan Robinson at 22 and Kayla Martin at 18 and Jimmy Butler at 16 points. It was a rare night where Jimmy Butler is the fourth leading scorer on the team. But the developed roster they have and the way Butler is a star, everybody knows it, and they built this cast around him. The fact that it's morphed together in the playoffs is shocking, but you see what's at work here. Dave Hyde is with us from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel trying to juggle both hoops and hockey with the Panthers and the Heat still alive in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Not just alive, but sitting in really good spots. It's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Dave, I've talked to people about Jimmy Butler. Certainly he demands so much of the attention, but I would love to ask you about Bam Adebayo. As a second star, maybe not a superstar, but a guy who will do whatever it takes to win and a headache in terms of matchups so far in this playoffs, what's the most impressive thing about him as a player? Well, you saw tonight that he can do so many different things in Game 3. In this whole series, the scoring on his good night, it's always there.

I think he had three dunks off of passes inside to him. But the defense is always there where he's matched up. He can go against Tatum as he has times.

He can go against big men of Boston as he has much of the time. He's very versatile in that regard and that's what Spolstra loves. There was a point in the last series, it's all blended together, I think it was against the Knicks, where their point guards, Kyle Lowry had fouled out and Adebayo had like four assists in the last six minutes of the fourth quarter to Jimmy Butler inside. And so the versatility of Adebayo is something that you almost have to watch night in and night out to understand how the Heat use them. You mentioned the undrafted players, the role players, they're also missing a couple of guys. So how would you describe the group that they're playing with right now around Butler and Adebayo? What they do is they take these guys who are hungry and have talent and Spolstra's great at recognizing what players can do and dismissing what they can't do and play into that regard. Caleb Martin, I was talking to him last week and he said at the very start when he came in here, he was waived by Charlotte, he needed a call from one of his friends, a rapper, to Karam Butler, a Heat assistant, to get a tryout with Heat basically.

He comes in here and he said Spolstra watched him play and he said, okay, I'm going to be the chief complaint officer in watching your game and I'm going to tell you steps on defense, why you're misplaced here, so get used to it. So he tore apart his game and built it back up. Caleb Martin had the mindset and the hungry attitude to say, okay, I'm going to work hard and accept it. Now you're seeing the last game, I think he had 29 points, a career high for the playoffs.

Tonight he had 18 points, his defense is there. So what they do is they find these guys who have talent and they recognize the talent, but they also have this incredible work ethic that a lot of times guys who are drafted high or expect things out of contracts or whatever might not have. And that's what they're very good at, recognizing and developing. Certainly does start with the scouting department and the coaching, but also the guys who buy into, as you point out, the culture and the desire to win, regardless of what their roles might be. Dave Hyde is with us from South Florida, it's After Hours here on CBS Sports Radio.

Okay, I got to ask you about this moment with Eric Spolstra. It's late third quarter, the Heat are up by 30 something and he calls a timeout. What does that tell you about the head coach of the Heat, Dave? The more impressive part about that, Amy, I'm not sure if it was that timeout, but they were up midway through the third quarter into the fourth quarter. They're up anywhere from 20 to 30 points. They come out of a timeout and they run a play for Corey Zeller.

Are you kidding? You know, Mike McDaniel was there, the Dolphins coach, he should have run on the court and thrown a flag for talking 15 yards. They're running a play for Corey Zeller. I mean that told you, that was like the ultimate taunt at Boston, that we're running plays for Corey Zeller.

For people who aren't following Zeller, he played 18 minutes, had four rebounds, four points and a couple of blocked shots, so filled up a stat sheet too, how about that? As you're watching this game play out, even the early stages, I know they were up by 15 at halftime, but the early stages, where did you see the disparity between how the Celtics were playing? And I don't mean actual basketball, I mean more the mental side of it, the approach, versus how the Heat were playing. Yeah, I was surprised because I thought usually in these games, the team down 2-0 is desperate and, you know, look, Boston is so talented. I mean, they have talent across the board. And I thought they would come out and throw haymakers at the Heat and we'll see how the Heat would stand it. Right from the start, it was the Heat that came out throwing haymakers. You know, I just went through, heard all the interviews with the Boston players and just listening to them, they were dispirited from the start.

Joe Missoula, the coach, said we lost our identity on defense. I mean, wow, these are down 3-0 in a series. It'll be interesting to see what Boston has left right now.

This is a tough game to get if you're down 3-0 to close it out right away, but the way Boston was talking, it'll be interesting to see what they have left. Does Eudonis Haslam need to get into a game? That would be even more taunting than Corey Zeller play after a timeout. You know, the crowd's chanting, we want Haslam.

You know, he's retiring after this year of, what, 20 years. You could see Spolstra coyly look down the bench at Haslam who wanted no part of it. He didn't want to go in. He didn't want to be the, you know, I didn't talk to him, but I looked at him on the bench and it looked like he was saying, no, no, no, I don't want to go in. He didn't want to be fodder for more taunting of Boston. So in game four, I think he should get in.

Especially if it's something like this, my goodness, the fans would riot if they didn't see Eudonis on the court. Dave, before I let you go, I was looking through your Twitter and now you're covering the Panthers too. And you made the analogy of Matthew Kuchuk and Sergei Babrowski.

They are fire and ice. What does that mean as the Panthers have won both their games in overtime? Yeah, look, Babrowski has come almost out of nowhere for the, you know, for the last couple of years. They've come up with these guys to replace him, including this year, Alex Lyon, from basically the minor leagues. And he got hot and they rode him into the playoffs. But you look at who's been a star for the Panthers, it's Matthew Kuchuk and Babrowski has been stopped.

I think it's 100 of his last 103 shots in this series against Carolina. So you look at who rises in the playoffs and Babrowski has for the Panthers. Jimmy Butler has for the Heat. He won needed in game three on Sunday.

But he's been the star that's carried this team throughout. In South Florida right now, on Auburn 80 nights, you got the Heat and the Panthers. Everybody's winning. It's almost like I'm in some fantasy world because, again, for the last two decades, only the Heat have won down here. And now, you know, the Panthers have joined them. We had Florida Atlantic and the University of Miami in the Final Four.

We are like a fantasy land of surprises right now. I'm really impressed that the Panthers, as well as their fans, were able to recover like they were from that four overtime game. It ended minutes before we went on the air at after hours.

And so we were watching the whole thing and it was pretty incredible. Awesome to catch up with Dave Hyde, who is with us from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. And you can find him on Twitter at DaveHyde, H-Y-D-E Sports. You're not getting much sleep these days, but we appreciate a couple of minutes for us, Dave. Thank you so much. Thanks, Amy.

No more four overtimes, though, for me. Please, please. Appreciate it. Thanks.

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