In the world of sports, there is one thing we can be sure of, no matter what the situation is. We know only one team (or individual, depending on the sport) is going to end their season or competition with a victory, and that’s the champion. Everyone else is going to end with a loss, and with that comes questions regarding what direction to go in for the future. As of this past Saturday, the Miami Heat get an early start to address these questions after getting swept out of the NBA playoffs by a cold front known as the Milwaukee Bucks. We all know the last year and a half has been unlike anything most of us have ever dealt with, but it’s still jarring to see a team who was in the NBA Finals a few months ago get eliminated in the first round without much of a fight. Let’s dive into a few of these circumstances as to why we are at this point with the Heat, and explore where they might go from this point forward.
As I mentioned in the first paragraph, Miami was in the finals literally a few months ago. The Heat, along with the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers, ended the season on October 11. Normally, and NBA season would end around mid-June, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the season was halted March 11, 2020, and didn’t restart until late-July. It’s an understatement to say the pandemic presented daunting and unique challenges for everyone, and the NBA was no different. Through it all, a bubble in Orlando was created to resume the season and keep the players safe, and some teams handled it better than others (to put it bluntly). The Heat were obviously one of the teams who handled it well, to the point where some (myself included), wondered if they would make this run if it was a normal season. Miami was the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference going into last season’s playoffs, and while they had a good team, I would be hard-pressed to find many who felt they would be the team to represent the East in the finals. Be as it may, the Heat became the conference champs, and had to be back on the court in short order, as this current season began before Christmas. Simply put, the offseason really wasn’t much of one for the squad, but how much of a factor that was in seeing Miami fall far short of last season’s results is anyone’s guess.
One of the biggest reasons why the Heat ascended to the NBA Finals last season was the play and leadership of forward Jimmy Butler. In my estimation, I always thought of Butler as a very good player overall, but just short of elite because I never looked at him as a man who could elevate a team to championship-level status. In the bubble, one could make an argument Butler was the best player in the league during that period of time, averaging 21.2 points, 6.5 rebounds and 5.8 assists per game. He, along with head coach Erik Spoelstra, was a calming influence for a team with a lot of young players, such as Bam Adebayo, Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro. With this core primarily intact coming into this season, there were some who thought the Heat could duplicate what happened in the bubble, while others were wondering if it was just the team being the equivalent of an overnight success story. I was in the camp of those thinking it was a flash in a pan, but I have been wrong before, so I had to wait and see along with everyone else.
In the midst of a shortened 72-game season (a normal NBA season is 82 games), the campaign was going a lot like it was for Miami last season before the stoppage of play. The talent was in place, and it was taking a while to mold it together, but it was starting to take shape. By the time the playoffs started, the vision was the Heat would be ready to roll. Add the addition of Victor Oladipo, who was acquired in a trade with the Houston Rockets before the deadline, and Miami was sure to have a team no one would want to see come playoff time. We would come to find out none of the hopes and dreams of the team would play out to a positive outcome. Oladipo would miss the rest of the season with a quadriceps injury, which also sidelined him in 2019 as a member of the Indiana Pacers, and the rest of the Heat ran into a motivated Bucks team they knocked out of the conference semifinals last season. The magic and energy they were able to capture in the bubble wasn’t there to be found, but it wasn’t as much about the lack of magic as it was about Milwaukee being much better than Miami was. With the exception of Game 1, won by the Bucks by two in overtime, the series was every bit the sweep the scoreboard shows, with Milwaukee winning games 2, 3 and 4 by a combined 80 points. To say the least, this was an embarrassing and humbling way for the Heat to go out after such promise, but I don’t know if even the best teams would have had much of a chance if the Bucks are going to play like that.
So here we are, with Miami left to answer a lot of questions about their present and future. While I’m not in the Heat front office (or anyone significant…haha). I can give my input for answers as much as I can looking from the outside. Was Miami just a bubble sensation? It looks that way, but that doesn’t mean credit should be taken away from their run to the Finals last season, especially since the rest of the teams were dealing with the same environment. Is Butler an elite player? I would say he has moments where he can achieve that status, but not consistently enough to where I put him in that class. If the answer to the last question is indeed no, then who can the Heat get to pair up with Butler? Most of the teams who are championship contenders have two star players, if not three, on their roster. It remains to be seen if Adebayo is that second star. After getting a max extension in November, it’s hard to say much progress has been made. Can Oladipo recover from his injury troubles? That’s a wait and see answer also. I say all of this to point out Miami has to mainly work with what they have, because there isn’t much they can do with their current situation. In other words, the bubble could be the ceiling for the Heat, and I don’t think that’s a hot take considering how much the East is improving around them.
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