When All's Said & Done
Barring a major injury that removes Dwyane Wade or Jermaine O'Neal from the equation for the duration, Heat owner Micky Arison, team president Pat Riley and coach Erik Spoelstra will get to say, 'I told you so.'
In some ways, not all.
That's because when all is said and done, at the end of the regular season, the Heat will finish with a better record than it did a year ago. Miami will enter the playoffs a better team than it did a year ago.
And the Heat will have a better chance to advance than it did a year ago. Funny how quickly things change around here. Just a little more than a month ago, Miami's playoff chances seemed on life support.
I presented in this very blog space 10 logical reasons for playoff panic. And then, this Heat team proceeded to do what it always does. It did the unexpected. This team has had a tendency all season to drive you crazy, and then drive itself right back into contention.
"Just when everybody thinks we're down and counts us out, we've been able to come back and prove that we've got a lot left," Heat forward and co-captain Udonis Haslem said. "That's the way it's been all year."
And now, they're here.
With eight regular-season games remaining against teams all out of play contention and a combined 189 games below the .500 mark, the stage is set for the Heat to storm into the playoffs.
Which, based on its M.O. all season, is reason No. 1 why you shouldn't feel too comfortable. Again, just when there are expectations and high hopes for this team, it has shown a tendency to deliver the opposite.
But March has been a month in which the Heat has made strides in distancing itself from that stigma. Miami has won 11 of 14 games to get to 40-34 going into Wednesday's game at Detroit. It is six games above .500 for the first time since March of 2007.
When all is said and done, I've got the Heat winning six of its final eight to close at 46-36. Those two potential stumbling blocks could come at Indiana this week and at either New York or Philadelphia in a back-to-back set on the season's final road trip.
Still, when all is said and done, that would be a three-game improvement from last season, when it finished fifth, advanced to the first round of the playoffs and lost in seven games to the Atlanta Hawks.
Unless the Milwaukee Bucks go on another ridiculously successful run despite a loaded schedule down the stretch, a 6-2 finish should give the Heat just enough of an edge to finish a game or so ahead of the Bucks to reclaim the fifth seed in the East.
And that could very well put the Heat in first-round rematch against the Hawks, with the Heat 3-1 against those very dirty birds this season. Of course, it could also mean a matchup with the Celtics, too. And Miami is 0-3 against Boston after squandering late leads in two of those games.
Even with all of the twists and turns of this turbulent season, the Heat is in position to, technically, be the improved team that Arison, Riley and Spoelstra talked about in training camp. But they can't take full credit for those proclamations because the Heat didn't take the route here that was charted.
The development of young players Mario Chalmers, Daequan Cook and Michael Beasley has revealed anything but clear-cut progress. The improved play at point guard has come from Carlos Arroyo, not Chalmers. The shooter expected to take pressure off Dwyane Wade has come from Quentin Richardson, not Cook or James Jones. The breakthrough season needed from Micheal Beasley has given way to the late surprising surges from Joel Anthony and O'Neal, who, according to TNT folks, has stepped out of the hot tub time machine.
When all is said and done, this team has delivered on the modest expectations heading into the playoffs. Even though it took a different and much more bumpy path to make that delivery.
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