Who says the regular season doesn’t mean much? Regular season records mean quite a lot. The league champion almost always has an excellent regular season record; it’s very rare for a team that puts up a respectable but not great record to win it all.
Is this really the first time you’ve heard anyone say that? Yes, the best teams win in the regular season, too. It’s also well accepted that their effort, especially in the first couple of months, is spotty. The Spurs were famous for slow starts and focusing more on pacing themselves than on wins, the Celtics acknowledged doing it last year. The issue was stirred up again this year when Andrew Bynum decided to delay his knee surgery so he could go to South Africa to watch the World Cup even though it meant he’d miss a large chunk of the season.
But such lucky bounces of the ball happens to every team. Sure it’s early, but if prognostication was really such a crap shoot, then you’d have to come up with reasons why the other projected good teams are doing pretty well. The Lakers, Spurs, Celtics, and Magic are currently the tops in their conferences, with a few surprises like the Hornets mixed in. I think most of us believed at one time that with such great players, the Heat shouldn’t have to hope for a lucky shot by Gay or a career night by Millsap: they should have been dominating these teams. For their margin of error to be so small as to be a couple shots away from a good record doesn’t speak well when they go up against the good teams of the league (Boston and Orlando, 2-1 against them with another game tonight against the Magic which I’m expecting the Heat to lose).
It’s not that one-sided. Most people assumes the qualifier of “unless somebody’s injured”. But I think people talk about injuries where they’d have to sit out games, not just a wrist injury that makes Wade go 1-13 and have a historically bad night. The Lakers won with Kobe’s bad knees and Bynum hobbled. The Celtics resembled an ER ward in the last half of the season. The Big 3 can play, and play through their injuries, but they’ve not been able to shed that soft label or be seen as a middling team
I think the Heat will bounce back and have a respectable record, but not a good record, and certainly not a good record by the lofty standards of preseason ranking projections. Given their struggles and injuries so far, I’d say they are a 57 win team at best. As for Dampier, there’s a reason Dallas got rid of him…
Yeah, they are a real shock this year. Richard Jefferson seems to have taken his body back from the ghost of Richard Jefferson last year
So mean!
Unless you ignore their softness, lack of size (even with Haslem), and seeming lack of chemistry.
Heat lose by nine and are now just one game over .500. Three losses in a row.
I know it is early but damn. Anyone else think that they may slip under .500 at some point this season?
James and Wade just can’t play together, according to ESPN they are -44 when both are on the floor at the same time. Last night it was obvious, Wade was a completely different player while Lebron sat.
Bwahaha! Go Magic!
I made a point to catch the game last night. It did seem a little clusterfucky. Based on my one-game anecdotal sample it seems perfectly obvious to me that it’s Wade whose game isn’t adapting, and not Lebron’s. Wade looked terrible, like he’s lost his sense of when to attack and when not to. He was playing the way I used to play when I got angry at the refs (it should be obvious but just to be clear, playing the way I played at any time is a bad thing for an NBA player to do).
But yeah, they don’t look like a very good team at the moment. I stand by everything I said about their chances going forward, but ew.
It also couldn’t be any more obvious that opposing teams are very tangibly feeding on the animosity against the Heat, which is pretty cool. Jameer Nelson got T’d up because after he busted their asses, he couldn’t resist telling the Heat he just busted their asses. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do but you could tell he just didn’t give a shit because he was enjoying it so much.
Both of them can’t play off the ball. I was reading a story on ESPN or FoxSports that said the team does a lot better when it’s only Bosh and either Wade or James on the floor. Without a good big guy to run the offense through in the post, Lebron and Wade sit around on opposites of the court watching the other. Offense gets stagnant, opposing teams take advantage
What I’m wondering, and some guy at ESPN as well, is why don’t they learn some pick and rolls with Wade and James? It seems a no brainer. Wade gets the ball at the top of the key, James sets a screen, then Wade runs off the screen and either beats his own man, creates an opening for James, or defenses collapse and they kick it out to a shooter. But it was noted by the author of the article on ESPN that they never do this! Why?? Freaking egos gotta be deflated with a sub 0.500 team before they look to make some changes
Its obvious these guys are unwilling to change their own game. Bosh does well because he knows he’s the 3rd guy, but both James and Wade wants to be #1. Sorta reminds me of how Shaq and Kobe was destroyed by the Pistons, but at least they got to the finals. If Wade and James don’t learn how to play off each other, then they won’t get past Boston.
I don’t like the new technical rules, i like it when teams show animosity towards each other. For the last five minutes of that game Jameer Nelson was by far the best player on that court for either team, i can’t hold it against him for showing a little over zealousness. Maybe if players went back to hating each other another debacle like this Miami team wouldn’t happen.
There’s a chance that this poor start will end up helping them in the long run. It may force them to figure out the changes you mention, and it may also defuse some of the hatred from the rest of the league. Now that it’s clear that the Heat aren’t the juggernaut some expected them to be, other teams might not treat their games with the Heat as their super bowl.
There’s also a chance that it’s just going to make Lebron and Bosh quit on this team like they did for their respective last teams.
If a playoff 27-19-10 is quitting, god help you if the man starts trying.
When he was trying he carried a much inferior team all the way to the finals singlehandedly. You can’t watch the end of those Boston games and tell me he did not quit, he obviously did.
Players only meeting after the Dallas game, Lebron bumping into Spoelstra like he did with Mike Brown during a bad loss…this team seems unraveling 
Winning fixes everything though and the next 3 games (Wizards, Pistons, Cavs) are very winnable.
Charles Barkley said during last Thursday’s TNT broadcast that he’s puzzled why they don’t play faster. It seems a no-brainer that a team with James, Wade, and a speedy PF like Bosh would be in the lower half of the league in pace. They should be running every other play! As much as I dislike him, Lebron is pretty much unstoppable when he gets out on the floor. Wade too. Then again, this probably stems from their lack of big men and rebounding problem. Can’t get out on the run if you don’t get those defensive rebounds
Just as an update, the Heat are 9-8 going into today’s game. So since Ike Witt started the thread they’ve lost three of four.
I know the regular season isn’t as important just their start blah blah blah, but this was supposed to be a superteam, and superteams don’t go 9-8 over any stretch.
They will do better than this but the 72-10 Bulls they most certainly ain’t.
To add onto this, teams with more skilled players should seek to play a game with more possessions, all things being equal, since more possessions = less variance, and the better team should win more. To take this to its opposite extreme, the worst team in the NBA would prefer to play a game in which each team had only 1 possession, as this would increase variation and thus their chance of winning.
In fact I’ve just done so.
What are the chances of violence or a riot when the Heat play Cleveland? They say they are going to have extra security, but I still think it is a very real possibility.
Things just keep getting better and better for the Heat. James shoulders the coach during a timeout and speculation is that it was intentional. It seems that James didn’t like being called out in practice for not being serious enough.
I really think that they could benefit from a veteran who would show the big 3 the dedication that is needed to win. In hockey, everyone knew that Mario Lemieux had loads of talent. However, it wasn’t until he played with Wayne Gretzky during the Canada Cup that he realized talent without work ethic is nothing in sports.
The weird thing is that Wade should be that guy. Like LeBron, he’s already carried a team to a title (and to an NBA title, not just a conference title), and unlike LeBron, he’s not a whiny bitch.