After all that, we get the Heat vs Pacers.

Moments after falling behind three games to one against the putrid, eighth seeded Atlanta Hawks, the national consensus was that the Indiana Pacers had a collapse of epic proportions. A team that was once regarded so highly as to being the favorites to beat the Heat in late May, the Pacers were currently a team in upmost turmoil.

When the Pacers needed wins to stay alive, they got them. Beating Atlanta in seven games was made a lot tougher than it needed to be, but somehow the first seeded Pacers did it. As I type this blog post, merely minutes after the Pacers took game six from the pesky Wizards, I can't help to think back to when NBA fans were envisioning an eastern conference finals without the Pacers. Of course, they had every right to. Roy Hibert looked like a shell of his former self, George Hill began doing his bestRaymond  Felton impersonation, and Paul George forgot how to put the ball in the basket. Head coach Frank Vogel began feeling more pressure than the United States President does on a daily basis. Yet through it all, the Pacers got the wins they needed and are still alive---for now.

On the other side of the matchup, the Miami Heat come off a 5 game series win against the Brooklyn Nets. An interesting series going in resulted in a one sided affair in terms of the outcomes of each game. The Nets battled tough, even taking game three at home, but their lack of  a veteran head coach, in my opinion, cost them crucial moments down the stretch in several of the games. Had Brooklyn made a bucket here or there late in the fourth quarter, we may have had a six or seven game series.

 In any event, that was not the case, and the Miami heat sit 8-1 in the 2014 NBA playoffs. If there was ever a time to knock the Heat out it would be now. Many scouts and media alike agree the Heat may just be at their most vulnerable, despite winning 8 of 9 playoff games. Lack of a big man in the middle, combined with Dwayne Wade's vulnerable knee and the overall team age (the oldest in the NBA at 32 average years) make the Heat anything but a sure lock to win the NBA title, despite having the best player on the court night in and night out in LeBron James.

Both teams are not the "powerhouses" most fans envisioned they would be, but it just goes to show that the Eastern Conference as a whole is so far behind Indiana and Miami talent wise.