Pat Riley’s grand plan on track as Heat closes in on 1st playoff advance since 2016 | Opinion
The home arena sits still off Biscayne Boulevard downtown while Miami Heat fans must watch from afar as their team competes in the NBA playoffs’ first round inside the Orlando bubble. Like them, the godfather watches from home, seeing what he has built play out.
Pat Riley should like what he is seeing, because it must look a lot like what he envisioned.
It is the look of a grand plan, by degrees, coming to fruition.
On Thursday the Heat beat the Indiana Pacers, 109-100, to take 2-0 command in the best-of-7 series. Duncan Robinson led the way with 24 points on a game-changing 7-for-8 shooting from 3-point range. (Where have you gone, Mr. Robinson? Downtown!)
Goran Dragic heated up late to finish with 20, Jimmy Butler chipped in 18 and Tyler Herro had 15. Miami’s 18 3’s set a franchise playoff record and Robinson’s seven tied the individual mark — all of it having Miami feeling good about its chances to advance entering Game 3 on Saturday.
The Heat is healthier than Indiana, yes. But just better, too, now 5-1 vs. the Pacers this season.
It is the broader view, the panorama, that Riley had in mind and engineered.
Miami on Thursday took a huge step toward winning its first playoff series since 2016, after missing the postseason altogether in 2017 and ‘19 and being ousted in the first round in ‘18. To advance would be a tangible indication of the right path — the path to recovering from the premature, acrimonious dissolving of the Big 3 championship era six years ago.
The path toward a shot at the franchise’s fourth parade down Biscayne.
“We have a chance to win it all,” said Jimmy Butler before this series.
He meant it. Miami in the next round would face the Milwaukee-Orlando winner. Heat would be favored over the Magic, and have matched up and fared well this season against the top-seeded Bucks. (Further, in the neutral-site bubble, Milwaukee would not enjoy the home-court advantage it would have in a normal year.
Riley loves the Bruce Springsteen song, “The Rising.” It’s the theme for his team right now.
It has been a year in the making, what is playing out now — in the middle of a coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic that has turned the world upside down. In the middle of social unrest over racial injustice that has players wearing slogans like Black Lives Matter and Say Their Names on the back of their jerseys.
Amid and overshadowed by these seismic circumstances, the evolution of the Miami Heat is happening.
Building around the young nucleus of Hassan Whiteside, Justise Winslow and Josh Richardson wasn’t happening, so Miami scrapped it.
Strategic impatience always has been a Riley hallmark, and the impatience to get to what’s next becomes more acute when one turns 75, which Riley did in March, one week into the pandemic.
So last summer Riley maestro’ed the four-team trade that brought Butler and Myers Leonard to Miami in exchange for Whiteside and Richardson.
This February came the three-way trade that essentially brought Andre Iguodala and Jae Crowder to Miami in exchange for Winslow and spare parts Dion Waiters and James Johnson.
Butler is the Heat’s top scorer and co-leader along with fellow 2019-20 all-star Bam Adebayo.
Leonard is a valued reserve who started most of the season.
Crowder started Games 1 and 2 of this series.
Iguodala is seeing an increased role as his 145 games’ playoff experience comes to bear.
And not to be underestimated, all four meet the standards of Heat attitude and culture — something that could not be said of Whiteside and some of the other departed.
And the best thing of all? Riley was able to swing those deals without hurting the team’s enviable salary cap situation heading into 2021 free agency next summer. Meaning Riley will be back at his favoite sport — whale hunting — in less than one year.
The whales on the horizon? They could include Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Anthony Davis and some guy named LeBron James.
To at least one of them Riley will be selling three championship rings, his own Hall of Fame pedigree, first-class ownership, a great coach in Erik Spoelstra, no state income tax, South Beach, oh, and a deep, deep roster full of young talent fronted by all-stars Butler and Adebayo.
The Heat is winning and competitive as is, with a roster that has 10 men averaging 20-plus minutes and eight averaging double-figure points. But if Butler and Adebayo are your second and third-best players, you have stepped up onto the contender plane.
From home, for now, Pat Riley is watching it happen.
And waiting to cast his lines next summer.
