The Miami Heat have hit rockbottom this season after last night’s dubious loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves
During the summer, Miami Heat president Pat Riley was praised after recovering from LeBron James‘ blindside signing with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
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After all, the Heat front office guru had re-signed Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, added Luol Deng and Josh McRoberts after losing out to LeBron. There are a lot worse things that could’ve happened after “The Letter.” Instead, Riley “recovered nicely.”
Seven months later, though, that tone has changed. Significantly.
The Miami Heat are currently 21-28 and are only the eighth seed in a bad Eastern Conference due to .12 percentage points. They have one more win than the Brooklyn Nets.
Miami is coming off back-to-back losses, to the Detroit Pistons and Minnesota Timberwolves, and have dropped four of their last five contests. During that stretch, Chris Bosh is shooting slightly above 40 percent from the field, while only averaging 19 points and five rebounds. Most importantly, his team is 1-4 during those games.
And while most of Heat fans are infatuated with Hassan Whiteside‘s emergence this season, most notably in his last six games where he’s averaging 17 points, 15 rebounds and four blocks, we’re overlooking the most important aspect for Miami this season. They just aren’t very good.
And that’s the safe for work version.
Although, the Miami Heat hadn’t hit rockbottom until last night, against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Miami lost a game to the Wolves that they probably should’ve won. Whiteside finished with 24 points and 20 rebounds, Deng had 18 and even Mario Chalmers contributed with 12. Heck, even Norris Cole played slightly well while finishing with 15 points off the bench. That’s a game the Heat usually win.
Although, Bosh didn’t show up. The Heat’s max player only finished with 14 points on 5-of-14 shooting from the field. Most importantly, though, he was a team-low minus-12 when he was on the court.
Still, Miami was in position to win. What ultimately cost them that victory was probably this dubious move by Cole — and Whiteside. He’s not immune to criticism despite his huge game.
The Heat forgot how inbounds passes work in crunch time vs. Minnesota. (They lost by 1.) http://t.co/9Y98FGNrUv https://t.co/d8n3bxDFDH
— SB Nation (@SBNation) February 5, 2015
Quite frankly, it epitomizes the Miami Heat season to a T.
Rockbottom. Like, there’s no way they can fall any further. This team is horrible. They just lost to the team with the worse record in the NBA last night.
The good thing is that they can only go up.
Although, that won’t happen unless change comes. Hit me with the “what do you want Pat Riley to do.” Yes, I know there are no moves to be had, but change needs to come nevertheless.
The Heat is getting practically nothing from its point guard play. And even when it is getting production from that group, like last night, they still end up blowing it in the end.
Miami can’t assume — which I believe is the case — that their lack of quality point guard play is magically going to simply cure itself. It’s not. It won’t. And if the Heat simply believe that to be so, this team is even more delusional than I already believed they were.
Sure, Dwyane Wade has been out for their past few contests, and will continue to miss time probably until after the NBA All-Star break, but that shouldn’t be an excuse. This team still has talent on their roster. Enough where they shouldn’t be losing to the worst team in the NBA.
The problem is that their talent is either not producing at all on a nightly basis, or aren’t producing simultaneously, which is kind of a problem.
A team with this much experience shouldn’t have a consistency problem.
Something needs to change in Miami. If not, we’re going to look back at our stance on Pat Riley this past summer and wonder if we were just buying into his past free agency lore.
Miami is bad. We were wrong. For the most part, Miami Heat fans have admitted that. It’s time that their front office does the same and, hopefully, it will prompt change.
One can only hope.