With core intact, Heat wholly prepared
MIAMI -- Dismiss the Heat at your peril. That's Pat Riley's message to anyone who thinks his defending champions aren't up to the challenge of defending their championship. There are roadblocks everywhere, ranging from Dwyane Wade's left shoulder to Shaquille O'Neal's state of readiness to the likelihood the Heat won't have the home-court advantage in any of their playoff series.
No team has won an NBA title without home court since the 1995 Rockets, one of the truly improbable champions, repeated as the sixth seed out of the West. No team since that Rockets ensemble has won fewer than 47 games and won a championship. You have to go back to the 1978 Bullets (44-38) to find a team with fewer wins that won it all.
None of this, as you can imagine, bothers Riley in the slightest. Sure, he'd like to have back some of the giveaways from earlier in
the season (the Heat were, incredibly, 1-3 against both the Knicks and Sixers). Sure, he'd like to have a healthy Wade, a motivated O'Neal, a crisp offense, and a defense of zealots, and, he believes, much of that is possible. Maybe even probable. He's going to spend the next few days driving his team to get to that sweet spot because he still believes in his group.
"When this team is functioning well, it is the best team in the league," Riley said before Miami's 91-89 loss to the Celtics last night at American Airlines Arena. "I think that. I don't care what anyone else's record is. There are different dynamics with this team than there are with other teams."
The Heat need a victory tomorrow night in their season finale against Orlando to register 45 wins. They won 52 games last season and 59 the year before, when they were the top seed in the East but couldn't get past the Pistons despite having the seventh game of the conference finals at home. This year has been one no one could have envisioned, a year in which the two top players -- Wade and O'Neal -- have missed 71 games while the coach needed a health-related leave of absence for 22 games.
To drive home the point, when Miami played Charlotte April 8, it marked the first time this season all the players and coaches who were expected to be available were, in fact, available. That was the 77th game of the season. The Heat lost anyway, in overtime. They lost again to Charlotte two nights later. This is a championship-driven team?
"It hasn't been a smooth ride for us," Riley said. "I think some of it, we have to take the blame for. Obviously, not having Shaq and Dwyane is a nice excuse, but we still could have won four or five more games and four or five more games would have got us what we had last year. There were just too many inconsistent effort nights and shooting nights.
"I'm looking at it as a year where we are the defending world champions, where it hasn't been a smooth ride," he went on. "It has been disappointing and frustrating at times. But when you are a veteran team, I do believe it's easier to turn it on, and we showed we could do that last year. I think we have the capacity to do that."
Wade returned for the aforementioned Charlotte game after missing 23 games with his left shoulder injury (he also missed seven other contests) but he does not have his trademark explosiveness back yet. He's also been utilizing acupuncture to help relieve the pain from knee tendinitis.
Shaq is Shaq. Last night was his 40th game (he missed 39 because of left knee surgery and two others because of a calf injury). Riley already is talking about getting the Big Aristotle primed, offering such tidbits as, "I want the ball to go into him every time." That is music to Shaq's ears, you can be sure. And this is his time of year.
"I do believe he will rise in the playoffs," Riley said of Shaq.
But the Heat need more than the Big 2. The Feb. 1 signing of Eddie Jones, back for his second stint with Miami, proved to be a godsend when Wade went down. In the 23 games Wade missed with the shoulder injury, Miami was 16-7.
It was a .500 team at best when Shaq was out. The return to form of Jason Kapono, a 3-point specialist, also will help.
The usual suspects from last year's title team are all back, from Jason Williams to Alonzo Mourning to Udonis Haslem to old friends Gary Payton and Antoine Walker. Payton missed last night's game with a torn left calf muscle.
"We're going to have to use our experience and our depth to carry us through," Walker said. "It has been so hard for us because we almost never had the 12 guys that we needed at the same time. You look and you see that it's going to take 53 games to win the conference and you think of all the games we dropped early and it's tough. But when you play all those games without Shaq and D-Wade, you're going to have problems."
That's all in the past, Riley says, and thus to be dismissed. He acknowledges his team needs work. There are efficiency issues, chemistry issues, and, surprisingly, confidence issues.
It all will get sorted out sooner or later.
"The playoffs will tell how effective this team is," he said.
