The Miami Heat are an enigma.
Most of the time, in the NBA, that’s considered a bad thing. The best teams offer hope in the form of certainty, not assurances and pipe dreams and potential flexibility and possible, though not guaranteed, returns.
But the Heat are different. They’ve always been different. Sort of like how the San Antonio Spurs’ track record for dominating is enough to prop them up during the slumps, Miami’s penchant for picking up the pieces of a campaign or offseason run afield, either by design (2009-10) or by accident (2014), is enough to make you believe that whatever they’re planning is a legitimate threat.
This is the dilemma with these Heat, as a variety of league executives admitted in some form to Grantland’s Zach Lowe:
“If they weren’t the Miami Heat, we’d all be laughing at them.”
It’s a tribute to the Heat, the league’s most intriguing team heading into the 2015-16 season, that skeptics of Pat Riley’s post-LeBron retooling feel the need to lace their doubt with a tinge of fear.
A few rival executives delivered some version of that line, and it subsumes all the uncertainty of an expensive on-paper powerhouse that feels vulnerable to age, injury, poor shooting, shaky defense, and the whims of a combustible center who flamed out everywhere else. The Heat are flinging away first-round picks to chase LeBron in Cleveland, just as they flung away four of them to get LeBron and Chris Bosh five years ago. Only this time, there is no guarantee that Miami will pick so low it won’t matter. There is a real chance Miami has mortgaged its future to build a 45-win team that will fade with Riley, leaving his successor to cobble together a new team from the rubble while the Suns — courtesy of the Goran Dragic trade — use the Heat’s picks.
You cannot ignore the uncertainty, the blatant aspects of Miami’s immediate and long-term fate left to chance. Team president Pat Riley just invested a near-max deal in 29-year-old Goran Dragic. Chris Bosh is now 31 and has four years left on his own max deal. The 33-year-old Dwyane Wade, who will turn 34 in January, is a 60-game player at best these days, and the Heat are on the hook for $20 million in 2015-16, as well as the presumed promise of a long-term pact next season.
Even the 26-year-old Hassan Whiteside is a source of discomfort. He has only one convincing 48-game stint under his belt, and should he pick up where he left off last season, it’ll take big money to keep him in 2016. And because the Heat don’t own his Bird rights, they would have to dip into their cap space to re-sign him, severely limiting their flexibility and, thus, their ability to chase Kevin Durant.
Then again, they are the Heat. They don’t need draft picks, and as Lowe posits, you better believe Riley will put them in position to at least land a sit-down with Durant next summer.
At what cost, though? And will the Heat be coming off a deep playoff run or an early exit? Maybe they miss the postseason entirely.
Such is the risk, as well as the promise, of building a roster that, on paper, looks like it could clear 50 wins but also struggle to reach 40.
