Miami Heat is a team coming together when so much else all around is falling apart | Opinion
It is happening in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Not in front of full home arenas but before no fans in a bubble in Orlando.
It is happening in an America embroiled in racial injustice protests, social and political divide.
There is everything to overshadow what we are seeing, to try to diminish it, to attach an historic asterisk.
All of this is true, and yet what we are seeing from the Miami Heat in these NBA playoffs stands on its own as remarkable amid all the surrounding challenges — maybe more remarkable because of them.
The Heat, after eliminating the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night, 103-94, are now higher in the basketball world than they have climbed in more than six years, since June of 2014. Only Udonis Haslem, who seldom plays now, remains on the team from that roster.
Miami rallied Tuesday from a wobbly first quarter to take control with a 26-9 run in the second quarter against the desperate Bucks. The Heat prevailed with balance, bench and fight more than any one star. They put six men in double-figure scoring but none had more than Jimmy Butler and Goran Dragic’s 17.
The Heat is the first team since 2013 to advance to a conference finals as a fifth seed.
Tyler Herro had 14 off the bench in the clincher. You pronounce his surname “hero,” by the way. He’s a 20-year-old rookie. There is something special about this group behind Erik Spoelstra’s coaching touch.
We are seeing a Miami Heat team coming together at a time when so much all around seems to be coming apart.
June 2014 was when Miami last reached the Eastern Conference finals en route to losing in the NBA Finals, after which LeBron James dissolved a budding dynasty and broke Miami’s heart by leaving in free agency.
Now the Heat is back again in the Eastern finals, set to play the winner of the Boston-Toronto series that the Celtics lead 3-2 entering Game 6 on Wednesday.
Miami, on the wing of all-stars Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo, has symbolically and otherwise officially survived the end of the Big 3 era to rise again to the status of basketball elite:
Final four.
After a four-game sweep of Indiana in the first round and now a convincing elimination of the team that had the best record in the NBA, Miami is now 8-1 in this postseason.
Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo missed Tuesday’s must-win game with an ankle injury, yes. But how much should that diminish Miami advancing when the Heat was 5-2 vs. Milwaukee this season in games in which the “Greek Freak” played?
Miami and Adebayo match up well again this man who seems to dominate everyone else. It is one reason the Heat is seen as a plausible landing spot for Antetokounmpo should he choose to go elsewhere in free agency next summer.
Hasn’t Giannis just been an eyewitness to everything right about Miami? Everything good about this team on the rise?
But enough about next summer and the whale-hunting aspirations of Heat president Pat Riley.
There is an Eastern Conference finals ahead.
Boston or Toronto each would be a tough test and likely favored over Miami, although season results thus far are inconclusive.
Miami is 1-2 vs. Boston but has won the lone recent meeting in the bubble.
The Heat is 2-1 vs. Toronto but lost the one recent meeting since the restart following the four-month delay due to the coronavirus/COVID-19.
Against either foe, Miami will have a fighting chance to reach the NBA Finals for a sixth time in search of a fourth franchise championship — something hardly expected when this season began draped in the normalcy we’d all taken for granted.
Getting ahead of ourselves here, but should Miami reach the NBA Finals, there is a fair chance the roadblock to a title could end up being the Los Angeles Lakers led by LeBron James.
It has been a heck of a Heat postseason run where none was really expected.
And for South Florida a welcome diversion and something to cheer at a time when a little feel-good is quite the valued prize.
This story was originally published September 8, 2020 at 9:32 PM.
