With just four wins separating the Heat from another ring, Miami is attempting to win it all in a way that no NBA team ever has

SCOTT JACOBS

You know the world is all kinds of backwards when the Dallas Mavericks (aka: Mark Cuban’s team) becomes America’s new favorite underdog as we enter the final series of the NBA season, and potentially the final handful of games for a while.

You know that show Everyone Hates Chris?  Well they should create another one: America hates the Heat, because if you’re not for Miami in this Finals, you’re most likely hardcore against them.

What Miami’s doing seemingly breaks every rule of assembling a championship team:

1. Develop a team through the draft and free agency
Dwyane Wade, Mario Chalmers, Eddie House, and  Dexter Pittman are the only original picks on the Heat who can say they were drafted by Miami (with Wade and Chalmers the only real contributors on this team of the 4).  Udonis Haslem and Joel Anthony were undrafted.  Everybody else from LeBron James and Chris Bosh to Juwan Howard and former Mav Erick Dampier were signed via free agency.

2.  Use free agency to enhance your team, not to create a team
This doesn’t happen.  Teams aren’t led by free agents right to a championship.  The Lakers won the last two titles behind Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol, before them it was Boston that won a title behind their Big Three and Rondo, but none of those guys were star free agent signings.  When the Spurs and Heat won it all, it wasn’t behind a savvy big name free agent: it was homegrown talent with some trades.  While guys like Gary Payton were instrumental for Miami, he wasn’t the guy.  You have to go all the way back to the 2003-2004 season when Chauncey Billups was the leader of a very balanced Pistons team that shocked the Lakers and the world.  That team would go onto five Eastern Conference Finals in a row after Billups was nonchalantly signed back in 2002.

That’s the last time a team’s key free agent signing led their team to a title.  Now consider the case of the Heat and LeBron in particular: they’re trying to win a title on the greatness of a mega free agent signing (and obviously Wade and Bosh too) in Year One.  Orlando tried the same route with Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill back in 2000, but Hill was never able to stay healthy. Other teams have tried and failed horribly.

Shaq won three championships in a row as the centerpiece of L.A.’s early 1999-2002 dynasty, and he was one of the all time great free agent signings BUT it still took him 4 seasons for the Lakers to break through to a title (He signed with them after the 1995-96 season).

Before them it was the Spurs again in a lockout shortened season, and before that the Jordan era.  None of those teams were led by star free agent signings.  They all got their stars via trades and/or the draft (And yes, while I know that Miami technically traded draft picks for Bosh and LeBron so they could give them that extra year they were going to Miami either way).  That makes the early success of The Tri-nasty Experiment even more amazing.

It’s like the line in the movie, I Love You Beth Cooper, where Rich says to Dennis “And this, my friend, is a rare occasion.  Chances like this don’t come along every day.  In fact, they never come along.  This does not happen.”

That’s Miami.  In the same way that no team has ever been built into a superpower the way the Heat have, no team has ever won a championship this way, this fast.  This does not happen.

3.  Maintain a well balanced roster with a few stars and key role players who can step in
Consider the Boston series where Miami won a few games with their Tri-nasty scoring 80% of their points.  Every title team has a star (usually two) and almost always features a Hall of Famer (the Pistons being the lone exception), but even the Jordan era Bulls didn’t put this much of the load on just a few guys every night.  Miami has had stretches of 9 minutes where only their star trifecta score, and there have been games in overtime where only Wade, Bosh, and LeBron touched the ball on offense.  Touched it.

4.  Play consistently good basketball and don’t fall behind early in games
Miami is notorious for starting slow in the same way that their fans are criticized for arriving late. The Heat are just as skiddish. For 10 minutes they’ll look like the greatest team ever, and then the next 15 they’ll look lost. The Heat themselves don’t seem to show up until the second quarter one out of every two games it seems.  Yet at the end of the day they can play an absolutely putrid game, like they did yesterday, and still come back because they basically have Scoring On Demand.  Whereas most teams have one star and a really good sidekick, the Heat have three guys that have been franchise players and who can go off at any time.  How do you stop 1, never mind 2 or 3?  When they get hot, they’re a machine.

5. Success comes to those who first go through heartbreak
99% of championship teams first had their title hopes quashed by that one team, and plenty of title-hopeful teams never got over the hump because that one team always stood in their way (see the Suns and Spurs or Kings and Lakers for two perfect examples).  Only then did some of those teams make the next leap.  The Spurs had the Lakers.  The Lakers had the Celtics.  The Heat had the Pistons.  Only the Celtics were able to assemble a power in one year and win it all that same season. But they did it through trades.

What Miami’s doing is basically cutting everyone in line who has patiently waited their turn.  That’s why people hate them.  It’s not just the glitz and the glamour and the never-ending attention that they get.  It’s that they cheated the system (legally of course).  Teams like Oklahoma City and Chicago built young versatile teams and have watched their teams grow and take their lumps.  One season is not taking your lumps. Dallas has been tinkering and re-stocking their team for nearly a decade looking for that elusive ring.  The Heat were irrelevant last year and haven’t been a threat since their title season.  They were blitzed by Boston last year in the first round and looked like a mediocre, going-nowhere in a hurry team.  For them to storm back this year on the heroics of three superstars and just plow through the league like they have in this post-season is just too much for people to take.  It’s as if it’s unfair.  But then again, life is also unfair.

6. Celebrate after you’ve won a title, not before you play a game
Miami’s gawdy party that they threw for Wade, Bosh, and LeBron angered a nation, and made the Heat America’s favorite team to despise.  No one’s ever celebrated a free agent splash like Miami did.  Then again, no one’s ever pulled off the coup that Miami did either.  In fact, including trades, the most lavish welcoming party I can remember for an NBA player’s arrival through a trade was Shaq, when the Heat acquired him from the Lakers.  After it was finalized, Shaq went into Miami and squirted a bunch of fans with a water gun.  Even then, it took two years for that team to win a title, and it was Wade, not The Diesel that carried the load.

Yet with all that said, the Heat are four wins away from an unprecedented championship.  Should they claim the title, expect them to plan a unique parade route.  After all, nothing about this team has been conventional.  Which is why almost everyone hates the Heat.

Photo: Getty

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