These Days, Everyone Can Stand the Heat
Look, if they were great, you'd be bored. The Miami Heat did brush greatness, a couple of months ago, ripping off a run of 21 wins out of 22 games in which they thundered through the NBA and briefly hushed the clamor over LeBron James's graceless exit from Cleveland. The Decision suddenly looked wise; James and teammate Dwyane Wade were touted as potential co-MVPs (cute!). There also was that widely published, hypnotic photograph from a December game in Milwaukee: a confident Wade in the foreground, arms triumphantly stretched, palms open, as James floated above the rim, the ball curled at the end of his arm, ready to hammer a dunk. How could anyone stop such virtuosity? The Heat were unstoppable progress, supra like the internal-combustion engine, or microwavable minicheeseburgers. There was no sense getting irritated about them any longer. But Team Everyone's Got an Opinion has meekly returned to the atmosphere. In the last week, Miami has suffered a ghastly streak of losses—a narrow one to the reshuffled New York Knicks; a comeback shocker against the Orlando Magic; a 30-point crushing by the San Antonio Spurs, the unfussy, efficient Berkshire Hathaway of basketball. On Sunday, it grew worse. The Heat fell 87-86 to Chicago—a game in which the most reliable Miami star at the end was the renowned Mario Chalmers; in which the Bulls clawed back after the Heat inexcusably allowed Chicago to rebound its own missed free throw; in which both James and Wade missed final-seconds, game-winning shots. It was not virtuosity. It wasn't even Washington Wizardsosity. And away from the glitter of South Beach, you could hear a faint snickering sound: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. The Heat are not what they hoped to be. They are not even close. They are a very respectable 43-20, third in the Eastern Conference, but that upbeat record masks a 1-9 mark against the NBA's top five teams. Miami has feasted largely on previously gnawed NBA carcasses. They've been hopeless in close games and are a distressing 0-3 against the Boston Celtics, the conference's first-place team, led by a collection of declining stars who joined the league during the Nixon administration. After Sunday, the Heat are also 0-3 against Chicago. The smart MVP pick now is Bulls guard Derrick Rose. "The Miami Heat are exactly what everyone wanted, losing games," Wade said after Sunday's defeat, which reportedly had some Heat players in tears. "The world is better now because the Heat are losing."Should we raise another banner in Miami? HEAT BASKETBALL: THE SCHADENFREUDE IS BACK. As Wade knows, the only thing humans respond to more than hype is hype publicly punctured, and the questions that happily kicked around when the Heat were 9-8 early on have returned with gusto. Can Wade and James co-exist? Did Miami undervalue depth? Who is this Chris Bosh and what is his purpose? The Heat have plenty of wins, but to borrow a fashionable term from a current celebrity train wreck who will not be named, they are not "winning." Naturally, this losing streak has prompted a rehashing of speculation that Heat president Pat Riley will Favre his young successor, Erik Spoelstra, and return to Miami's sideline to steer them in the playoffs. The Heat's problems appear, for the most part, to be basketball-related—murky leadership, a thin supporting cast, a half-court offense installed by Madame Tussauds. As the ESPN radio analyst Will Perdue put it on Sunday: "When you look at this Miami Heat team, there's a lot of standing around."