The Heat

The Miami Heat are awful. And I don't mean like the normal kind of awful team that resides each year at the cellar of the Eastern Conference. I mean HISTORIC AWFUL. Like "Daddy Day Care" is regular awful and "Daddy Day Camp" is HISTORIC awful. Now at the end of the day, their final record won't be anything close to the 72-73 Philly team that won 9 games or the 92 and 93 Mavs teams that won 11 and 13 games respectively. That won't happen because they still have Shaq who even in his present condition is still worth a lot of wins. And when Wade comes back he'll make them at least a decent team.

But that won't change the fact that this team is AWFUL.

Without Wade, the Heat have not one player that can consistently create for himself and make good decisions. This was the reason Ricky Davis was brought in but the truth is, Ricky is a DECENT creator (for himself and only himself, never a teammate) when he's the second or third option. When he's the first option, he's in over his head. Now you can survive in the NBA without creators if you have two things: defense and good shooters to combine with an inside force. The Heat have neither.

Jason Williams, Ricky Davis, Penny Hardaway, Dorell Wright...all of these guys are streaky shooters at best. There's not one guy on that team that will kill you every time you leave him open. That's what they had in Jason Kapono but they let him walk in free agency. There's no ramifications or negative consequences to keep a team like the Spurs from double and even triple teaming Shaq on every play. Udonis Haslem is the only guy who is even remotely consistent with the jumper and he's a 15 foot shooter. More over, after watching them play tonight you'd think that the Heat don't even know they have Shaq on their team. At times the Heat went literally 6 or 7 straight possessions without Shaq every touching the ball. We've established that no one else on this team is capable of scoring without serious help, right? I know Shaq isn't the same Shaq from 2004 but he's still SHAQ! The Heat played like they had Gary Coleman playing the center spot tonight.

The big thing, though, is their defense. At some point Mark Jones, the broadcaster, said something to the affect of "this team depends on great defense and when that doesn't happen they struggle." Translation: this team would be lucky to score 100 points in TWO games, let alone on a single night, so they better bust their tails on D and hope to goodness that the other team decides to put two farm animals in the starting lineup in place of their two best shooters.

Problem is, this team probably STILL couldn't hold another team under 85 points if they DID play two farm animals. Their perimeter defense is seriously the worst I have EVER seen. Dead serious. I feel that a team of 8th grade girls from a school for the deaf and blind would play better perimeter defense than these guys. Jason Williams has never been even a passable defender but he's gotten worse after the knee surgeries. Smush Parker is a complete idiot in every facet of the game so it's no surprise that he still can't seem to wrap his head around the concept of actually staying IN FRONT of your man. And then there's Ricky Davis. I used to think there was no worse perimeter defender in the league than Antoine Walker. But darnit if Pat Riley didn't go out and prove me wrong and found one who was. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Ricky's man drove tonight it was a free trip to the paint. Granted, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker are incredibly tough covers but surely an NBA player should be able to stop them every once in a while. Meanwhile Shaq is aging and not nearly as explosive when it comes to shot blocking as he used to be. But he doesn't stand a chance with that team full of matadors out there waving a red flag and giving opponents clear paths to the basket. I wanted to scream "Ole!" on almost every possession.

This is a really, really bad team. And if they don't get it together soon, no amount of magic that Shaq and Wade can put together is going to save them.