Heat bench is still weak even with Ray Allen, Cole is one of the worst back up PG's in the NBA and with the trade rumors going on, Heat are trying to get DJ Augustin from the Pacers who has regressed but I still believe his skill set makes him a valuable asset.
Heat haven't done anything this year to solidly themselves as a scary team, the only person scary on their team is LeBron who's having the best season I ever seen anyone have in my life.
and the Bulls and Pacers are improved teams this year, especially defensively.
Heat are 0-2 very the Pacers year, scored 77 and 89 points each game. Pacers can easily shut down Miami in the playoffs and Miami should be concerned because Pacers are a team who have been creeping the last 3 years and are emerging as an elite defensive squad, the best in the NBA right now and that's without Granger.
Heat also haven't beat Chicago this season.
I don't see the Heat or Knicks beating Chitown or Indie in a 7 game series.
Norris Cole being a bad backup PG is kinda irrelevant considering Miami has either James or Wade on the floor for pretty much 48 minutes unless it's garbage time.
Miami tore Chicago a new one today and I don't see Rose's return if it even happens greatly helping their offense. The Bulls only have 1 or 2 players on their team who are good jumpshooters and even those guys are streaky and prone to throwing up bricks frequently.
Both Chicago and Indiana certainly have a chance to beat the Heat (a much better chance than us) but the Heat have the huge upper hand imo that they've been to the finals twice and won it now, the monkey is off the back, postseason confidence will be high and they are unlikely to crumble mentally, we've seen that happen to Chicago in recent years ie when they lost to Boston in the first round despite playing a much better series, Boston just had that veteran experience and had Pierce and Ray Allen to hit jumpshots down the stretch of games.
With Indiana it's most likely going to come down to whether Paul George can maintain his swag in the offseason, the dude is definitely becoming elite but does he have the mental toughness to play at that level against the best teams in crunch time? He might be a year or two away from that at this stage in his career.