The how are the Heat doing thread

The Game Room
1

I figured that many Dopers who are basketball fans, regular or in passing, would love to discuss the formidable Miami Heat.

So, how are the doing so far?

The Heat currently have a record of 8-5, for a .615 winning percentage.
This record ties them with division mates Atlanta.

Currently, only Boston, Chicago, Orlando, Oklahoma City, Utah, LA Lakers, San Antonio, New Orleans and Dallas have better winning percentages than the all mighty Heat.

Wait a tick. A full one third of the NBA is equal to or better than the Heat? That pegs them as an average team, at best.

I am not a fan of how this team got put together so I hope that they continue the season at their current place in the standings. The only problem I see is that most of the teams I listed above are in the western conference.

2

Bosh is basically another guard, Wade and Lebron are too similar in their playstyles. If Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudamire got together and made another super team like they keep hinting at it would be a much better team because their talents actually complement each other rather over lapping like they do in Miami.

3

I predicted way back when this first happened that the team wouldn’t be that good because all they can do is take it to the hole. Worship my prescience!

4

Oh come on, they are a super talented team with almost no flaws - except their shallow bench and the fact that they have trouble beating anyone with a good guard or quality big man (Marc Gasol…).

Still, they have two of the top 5 players in the league and they will most certainly learn to play together which will garner a big record and a playoff birth - and perhaps even a first round win. The problem is the third member of “the three whatever they call themselves” is that Bosh isn’t a great defender against quality big men (and he’s fragile). Once they get to teams like Boston, LA, San Antonio, Utah, or New Orleans they’ll lose. Heck, they’ll have trouble with Chicago if Boozer meshes well with Rose and Noah.

5

I think people on both sides have been pretty universally very silly about this whole thing. It was silly to just declare that they’d win 70 games and immediately start blowing everybody out (if anyone did that); it’s just as silly to start drawing conclusions about their fitness as contenders because they aren’t doing that. A lot of these flaws may be real flaws, obviously, but I think it’s crazy if anybody thinks they know anything about the Heat at this point. Bosh didn’t suddenly become a different player, and it’s not the worst thing in the world to have two guys who are used to dominating the ball. Those are probably just artifacts of each of those guys being in an incredibly different environment from the one each is used to – the best player any of those guys have played with before this year – at any level – is a half-washed-up Shaq, and the best guard was one good year out of Eddie Jones.

It always seems to me that most sports fans don’t give much credence to the idea that things in sports are extremely uncertain, and that even doing everything perfectly only gives you roll-of-the-dice odds to succeed. Predicting that the Heat flatly can’t get out of the second round of the playoffs or that they just won’t be “very good,” in November, strikes me as orders of magnitudes too confident based on what little we already know; just throwing stuff at the wall basically.

I don’t see any reason that this team can’t still end up just waxing people all season long, given how good these guys are. So I think they’re doing fine, really; only if anybody, including those three guys, thought they were going to instantly be the best team in the league by a significant margin, they were being silly then too. It’s not like they aren’t winning games, and it’s not like the numbers don’t actually suggest that they’re pretty great at this early stage anyway. 8-5 with the best team metrics in the NBA at this point seems fair enough to me.

6

I hate the Heat and Lebron so I’m glad to participate in the pile on

I’ll admit I was a little nervous when all 3 of these guys announced they were going to the same team, and little bit more nervous when they got a surprising amount of depth through trades and free agency. However, I’m happy to say, at this early point at least, that I was wrong

People are right, Wade and Lebron’s games don’t compliment each other, so either way you’ll get the same type of playing going in for dunks and layups. While it’s hard to stop one of them, let alone 2, there’s only 1 ball, so it’s not like Lebron or Wade’s going to get a turn when the other can’t make the shot. They still have to rebound and that’s where their porous big men come into play

Chris Bosh was supposed to be this great complimentary big man, but at least through the first 13 games, we see that his elevated stats on Toronto was only because he was the only offensive option and the best player on that team. Neither he nor Wade knows how to play off the ball, and it showed clearly when Bosh scored 35 points a few games ago but needed plays run for him to do it

I thought the Heat would gel faster than they have. I looked at Boston’s Big 3 from a few years ago and thought the same might happen here. Luckily I was wrong. Garnett, Pierce, and Allen are different players that compliment each other. Bosh would compliment the other 2 only if he was tougher, which he is not. Plus, Garnett’s intensity is probably more than Lebron, Wade, and Bosh’s combined. Lebron went to Miami to play with his friends and take pressure off himself, Bosh is riding his coattails. Garnett was the instant leader and defensive anchor on the Celtics, there is no parallel on the Heat

The cracks are already starting to show. Without one of the Big 3, they have nobody. No Wade equals a loss to a below-average Grizzlies team. Boston spanked them twice with Glen Davis and the corpse of Shaq. Unless something changes real soon, I don’t see them getting past Boston or even the Bulls in the playoffs

7

I think we’ll know a lot more after the Magic rematch in three days. It’s in our house, so I expect us to do a lot better this time.

8

Orlando is still the only winning team they’ve beat, and they kinda just laid down after a competitive first half when Miami came out of the half time break and hit 3 straight 3s to make a close game a blowout.

9

This is still premature and they’ll learn to play together in time. Wade missed the preseason and hasn’t been at full strength for some of this season, Mike Miller won’t be ready until next month. And now Udonis Haslem is out with a foot injury. So there are going to be more bumps in the road for sure. It’s silly to treat this team as a finished product, like the stars won’t get any better together.

10

Time is something Spolestra doesn’t have. With their toughest guy Haslem out at least 6 weeks and potentially until the All-Star break in Feb, I wouldn’t be surprised if they Heat becomes a middle-of-the-road team from now until then, something like a 4 or 5 seed, and Riley takes over. Toughness is what this team needs and Riley’s one of the only ones capable of making the team tougher and having the respect of his players.

11

But objectively there is less than no reason to believe that’s what’s going to happen. A middle of the road team based on the loss of Udonis Haslem, a handful of posts after you said:

?

I mean, it’s good that you fessed up to the fact that you hate the team, because it saves me having to ask, but you aren’t really approaching this rationally. This is just stuff you want to be true.

12

Haslem isn’t someone who you can count on to lead the team, but in every championship caliber team there are role players and guys who are good at what they do and fit the style of the team.

Without one of the Big 3, without those guys taking the double-teams and attention away from the likes of Haslem, the other guys are not going to be effective. That’s what I meant

However, the Big 3 by themselves are not going to be able to win a championship without good role players such as Haslem. It’s a team effort, as cliched as that sounds. Given that the weakness of this team was pegged even before the season started as their big men and front line and toughness, I don’t see how this is going to be anything but a disaster for the Heat.

I admit readily that I hate the Heat and I want them to fail, and I want Lebron especially to fail, but I don’t see how a team created with the most hype ever in recent history can be seen as anything less than failing to live up to any and all expectations by being 8-5. I’m happy they’re failing and I want them to fail, and I’m happy reality is proving me right so far.

13

About to lose their sixth…

When do you think espn.com will remove the “Chase for 72” section? Will they wait until the tenth?

14

With all the hype ESPN was guilty of and enabling the whole Decision debacle, I fully expect them revise their website with the chase for 71, 70, 69…

15

Wow. 8-6, and totally spanked by Indiana.

To be honest I don’t find this shocking.

However, yes, the ESPN “Heat Index” is becoming really, really embarassing. They need to take that part of their site down. You’d think sports journalism professionals would know that you don’t play 'em on paper and that nothing’s a sure thing.

16

They have still outscored their opponents by more than 100 points this year so far, for an expected 10ish wins – almost a 60 win pace. And that’s with the injuries and with the putatively lackluster basketball they’ve been playing.

I’m not saying they are what the hype allegedly had them out to be, or that this slow start is going to immediately fade into the background, I’m just saying that if that’s how it turns out, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

17

Because the expectations were about winning championships, not about having a good first one-sixth of the regular season. It goes without saying that very few people thought they’d struggle like this even without the injuries, but most people acknowledge the regular season does not mean very much in the NBA. You can’t put that aside just because Miami is having a mediocre start.

18

I can because I want to :smiley:

I know there’s a lot of hindsight in this. Nevertheless, the way they have been losing doesn’t speak well for the team.

Coming into the season, if the main expectation was that they’ll be winning championships, then the 2nd most touted expectation was that they’d at least be pretty good in the regular season. Even the doubters who thought they’d need some time to gel never predicted 8-6, losing to the likes of Indiana and Memphis. Jeff Van Gundy said they’d never lose 2 games in a row and will challenge the 72 win record

Of course anything can happen, but so far they have a lot of severe problems that they haven’t been able to overcome. When I look back at the analysis from before the season, it was all about depth and their frontline. That’s turned out to be completely accurate. No Miller to space the floor, no big guys, no toughness, and now no Haslem on the interior. Those guys will be back of course, but the fact that this hyped team with possibly 2 of the top 5 players in the league can’t seem to win consistently makes the early doubters right

And I don’t discount that the regular season doesn’t mean much. Boston was a 4 seed last year and went 27-27 in their last 54 games (I think). But that was a veteran team dealing with health issues and old legs. Spurs always seem to sleepwalk through the regular season and turn it on in the playoffs. Same with the Lakers. I get that the regular season is just a warmup for April, May, and June. What I’m doing is laughing at Miami now because of the hype and enjoying the empty arenas of Miami and the pouting of Lebron. Sure, I’ll overrate any loss and underplay any win, I hate them, its natural. But underneathe the scorn, you can see that an 8-6 record and losing to sub 0.500 teams isn’t going to, and shouldn’t, give anyone any confidence that this team will bounce back.

19

You keep making that leap from “this is what their record is” to “can’t overcome,” “doubters were right,” and all that, though, and that’s where your bias isn’t doing you any favors, in my opinion.

Because right now, the differences between the Heat as presently constituted and a Heat team with the best record in the East are an OT loss on a career night by Paul Millsap in which he went 3-3 from three point range to make the third, fourth and fifth threes of his career (he’s one of my favorite players, believe it or not, but you have to admit it’s a little fluky), and buzzer beater by Rudy Gay. That’s it. Those two things break a little differently and the Heat have the best record in the conference despite the injuries and despite all the flaws that you’ve identified for us. Would those two events, which aren’t even in the Heat’s direct control, have meant the doubters were all wrong if they had happened in the Heat’s favor?

Again, I’m not really defending the position that the Heat should actually be considered title favorites, and I’ve only seen them play once thus far, so for all I know you’re right about the subjective factors that make them weaker than they seem. But from what I can tell it seems like you’re setting yourself up for a big letdown if things keep going more or less the way they’re set up to go (which is terribly interesting from my more-or-less neutral perspective).

20

Which was stupid. I thought I said at the time but maybe I didn’t. It’s dumb to pick any team to win more games than that because anybody can get hurt at any time. And the fact that this is a completely new team makes it that much dumber.

Most of which are likely to be overcome with time, particularly the chemistry but mostly the injuries. I do think they’ll have to try to pick up a better point guard option and find some more help in the paint. They’re apparently looking at Erick Dampier - which everybody always does.

Not this year. They noticed it’s gotten harder to turn it on because their team is getting older.

Right, so your opinion shouldn’t be taken seriously.

It doesn’t matter if ‘people have confidence’ that they’ll bounce back. If they get healthy, they will bounce back. In terms of talent and stats, they’re a better team than their record indicates.