Dave Hyde: Heat filled with desperation, doubt and a dwindling flicker of faith
The Heat's hops are down to following the magical run of last season from a play-in game to the NBA Finals. That's not a blueprint. It's a fantasy.
MIAMI — So, now reality begins to saturate the Miami Heat season, desperate and depressing, eighth place feeling as flimsy for their chances as it sounds.
Oh wait.
I wrote that sentence this week last season before that desperate and depressing team rocketed to the NBA Finals.
So, this time the idea comes with qualifiers and modifiers attached as well as a leap-of-faith clause in case Mini-Jimmy Butler again becomes Playoff Jimmy next week. That’s assuming the Heat even make the playoffs. Another leap.
They have a weekend match set with awful Toronto before a play-in game, or maybe two, to reach the playoffs. Things swing wildly from one night to the next in the Eastern Conference’s pecking order, so perspective must be kept when viewing the bigger picture.
That big picture’s easier to read: The Heat can’t compete with the best teams in the league. And — here’s where a lesson-learned qualifier is added — they haven’t come close to doing so this season.
They’re 0-13 against the top six teams in the NBA after Wednesday’s 111-92 drubbing by Dallas. That eye-popping winless record needs no qualifiers or modifiers. So, they didn’t so much shrink on the national stage against Dallas as regress to their identity and confirm why mistrust for this team is warranted
The glaring problem wasn’t just that the Heat lost, considering that happens to a lot of teams Dallas is playing right now. It was the manner they went down again, looking lost and leaderless. Jimmy Butler had three points until the final minute of the first half and finished with 12. Bam Adebayo began the night shooting 1 of 10 and ended with eight points.
“They’re exhausted,’’ was many fans reasoning on social media. And it’s true, the Heat had a gutty, double-overtime win against Atlanta the night before on Tuesday.
You know who else played back-to-back nights and was on the road? Dallas. Its stars were still stars. Luka Doncic had 29 points and nine rebounds. Kyrie Irving had 25 points. For that matter, the Heat’s Tyler Herro, who played 48 minutes Tuesday and just returned from injury, had 21 points and seven rebounds against Dallas
“It wasn’t fatigue,’’ Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of his stars’ troubles.
Fatigue would be a better excuse than the reality. This leads back to the Heat’s 0-13 record against the six top teams — Boston, Minnesota, Denver, Oklahoma City, the Los Angeles Clippers and Dallas. That speaks volumes. It’s explanation enough that what they have isn’t enough.
Still, that list also offers one glimmer for the Heat to save the season with a shock-the-world postseason. Boston is the only team among the top six in the East. All the others are flotsam and jetsam, marginally better or worse than the Heat on any night, though Philadelphia looks to be rising with a healthy Joel Embiid.
“We have a formula of how we can win games,’’ Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “It’s not necessarily the easiest way, but we’ve proven we can win games. Get teams in the he mud and make it really tough. But it takes a great emotional, physical, spiritual connective commitment. It does to be able to do that. But we’ve also proven when we do that the energy changes for us offensively.”
Can they get dirty and disruptive overnight like last year? This roster has no margin for anyone missing. So, the loss of Herro for large stretches, the disinterest of Butler for too long and now the neck injury to Terry Rozier take an exaggerated toll on the record.
“I don’t care what’s going on in the standings,” Spoelstra said. “I just want our team playing the way we’re capable of playing. That’s what we’re going to focus on the last two games.”
If they regroup and avoid Boston in the playoffs, they could win a series or even two against the rest of the subpar East. Someone has to win those series, after all. Why not them?
But the Heat haven’t shown any sign of being special through the 80th game on Wednesday. You have to hold the flicker of faith close to think they will. And when this season ends, it’s time to swap out anyone but Adebayo on this roster for a new start, qualifiers and modifiers be damned.