NBA: The Heat Can Fix This

The Miami Heat fell to a fourth straight defeat but Al Dannity says not to worry. There’s no need for a Pat Riley miracle cure to fix a team that isn’t really broken.

Still loaded
The Miami team that lost to the Chicago Bulls last night, giving the Bulls a sweep of the season series, is still largely the same outfit that started the year as red-hot favorite to win the NBA Finals. LeBron James is still there and still scoring regularly, Dwayne Wade is still a force to on the floor. As for the Like a Bosh mockery of Chris Bosh, few players who perform as well as Bosh get the kind of criticism he receives for off-nights. Let’s face it; a lot of NBA betting fans just don’t like the Miami Heat. That’s understandable. LeBron and his pals know how to get on people’s nerves but that doesn’t mean we should count them out after one run of four defeats.

A 43-20 record is far from shabby, and history has shown that regular season overall records count for more than isolated head-to-head comparisons with the best teams in the league. For all his criticism as a man to finish games, the last I checked D-Wade still had a championship ring and was Finals MVP.

Riley won’t panic
Erick Spoelstra needs a lot more to go wrong before anyone can legitimately start making comparisons to Stan Van Gundy. Pat Riley famously replaced Van Gundy with himself in December 2005 and promptly won a NBA Championship at the end of the season. While such a move can’t be ruled out in the summer, Riley would not be so rash as to make a change this late in the season. There’s also the matter of Spoelstra essentially being Riley’s man, a hand-picked successor who the former Lakers and Knicks coached has groomed for the top. Parting ways with Spoelstra this close to the post-season would be foolish and could blow up in Riley’s face. The master manipulator has the patience to wait and see how the first year with his new group of superstars ends before making any franchise-shifting changes.

Think about the bigger picture
Some of the numbers for the Heat are startling on initial observation but bear deeper thought. Miami has gone 1 of 18 with shots when trailing by 3 or fewer points with less than 10 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter or overtime. That’s awful as an isolated stat but it also says that 17 of the 20 games the Heat have lost so far were within reach. Likewise the 1-9 record against the NBA’s top five teams looks bad but bears no relation to how a playoff series might go. These games are scattered across the year, not bunched together like a playoff series. Right now the target for the Heat is to finish with as good a record as possible. The 43-20 position they currently hold is good for the #3 in the Eastern Conference and from March 23 the schedule favors them substantially. Right now the Heat are in a rut but it’s the kind of rut most NBA teams would kill for.

There’s no crying in Basketball
Given Erik Spoelstra’s comments about some of his players crying in the locker room after the game, Sports Interaction is offering bettors a chance to bet on which member of the Heat will be first to shed some tears on a NBA court. Check out the Sports Interaction Basket Bawl odds for your chance to win.

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