I know the psychology of the NBA better than I know that of any other league, pro or college. Which is to say I know next to nothing of it. I know this franchise better than any other in the NBA. Which is to say not nearly enough.
It follows that I have been taken by surprise by the “Heat’s” start to the season. Yes, by the 1-3 record, but no, not by that at all really. I never remember a “Heat” team that is seemingly being pulled in two, or multiple, directions at once; a “Heat” team that does not seem to be on the same page together, a team that seems to have lost its collective sense of self.
A sports team is a concept. There are animate parts of the inanimate concept here and there lying around. The concept is made animate, a mini social organism, when a master pulls them together and makes them dance or fly, or shoot baskets. The master must pull the strings in coordination knowing that this one is frayed, this one’s elastic, this one you can pull hard on, this one is more delicate. The master must do this with a deftness and knowledge of the parts for 48 different minutes of 82 segments of a performance. To do that he must know the psyches and the physics of his animate parts made an animate social organism in those temporal segments. This is made easier, sometimes, with continuity, when the animate parts don’t change. There is more to it than that of course. Sometimes continuity leads to staleness and stiffness and parts need to be replaced to keep the social organism refreshed. Sometimes continuity leads to breakage, physical or mental, of a part and it must be replaced.
I did think that this “Heat” team needed an upgrade in its parts. I did not think that this team would have won the NBA Finals had it advanced past Boston last season. When this new season began I didn’t think it would get to the Finals. No significant parts were replaced, no key additions or subtractions made in the off-season. Still I thought that this team would be very good this season.
What I saw in the first game of the new season was unexpected and ominous, to the mockery of some others. Fundamentally, I saw a team that was more concept than animate social organism. I saw Tyler Herro playing at the stratospheric height of his short career, with energy and effort and skill. Tyler was, in that game and has been through four games, the sole highlight. I saw, and see, no change in Jimmy—as none is warranted! He has been superb as he always has been. But Bam Adebayo and Kyle Lowry, well, my God. Duncan Robinson is a part that Coach Spoelstra evidently has concluded is surplus to needs. In that judgment, if that is his judgment, I concur. Duncan has played sparingly.
I did not literally see, since I do not watch, nor figuratively, the lack of effort in the first game that both--both now--Jimmy and Spo said was there. Jimmy informed what he said a little bit: When there was a loose ball on the floor you didn’t see us diving for it.-And -We have to get back to our identity, defense. A “Heat” team, and a “Heat” team in the FIRST game of the season, and at HOME, not giving effort?!?! Matter of first impression for me, that.
What I see, figuratively, is bad enough. The team is not coordinated animism, it is uncoordinated animism. When Tyler is on, Bam and Kyle are not; when they are on, as they were, I think, in just one game (Boston) it is not enough, even with effort, to beat the best like Boston. (Spo said he liked the team’s effort in the Boston game.). I would have thought the “Heat” good enough, at home, with a hot start, to vanquish a foe without their two key parts. I was surprised, ominously so, that over the final 36 minutes of the Chicago game Miami led for 1:06; that our skills individually and as a collective did not allow us even to remain a threat to win that game.
Lack of effort will bite you almost every time but very good teams often are able to beat a clearly inferior team on talent alone. Lack of effort is one of those things I have learned about the NBA. I hold it an impossibility--Pat Riley, the Tulkinghorn of this franchise, would have me burned at the sake for the thought--for any master to pull a player's string to its full tautness every minute of every one of 82 games. That seems to me beyond nature and at any rate it is apodictic in the NBA. The difference among teams in the standings at the end of a season is not due to the first place club having given full 100, 100% of the time; the lion's share of the difference is accounted for by talent. I'm sorry, you're an idiot if you think otherwise. Therefore, a team with greater talent must be able to beat the teams that it should beat on talent alone, even when the effort is not fully there.
In short, the “Heat” is not 1-3 because of lack of effort. That we are 1-3 speaks to me of a lack of talent for all of the reasons that talent isn't somewhere: because it was never there in the first place, because it has regressed, because it has been made fragile with age and over use, because the psyche is burned out or has not fired yet and where the mind goes the body must follow, because the master is not pulling the strings deftly. That last is explanatory only at the margins of a season's record. I think Erik Spoelstra has pulled too hard on Bam Adebayo's strings these first four games, beyond that string's limits. Spo seems determined to make a shooter out of Bam. Bam led all players in shots taken at the half of one game. Turning Bam into a scorer has not worked. I trust that Spo will see that and slack off Bam. With Kyle, Spo is pulling on a string that is played out in every way. I don't know what Spo is going to do about that. That may be left to Tulkinghorn. As I wrote after, I guess it was, the Chicago game, if you're pulling ineffectually on two strings out of five, that's 40% inoperable or less than operable strings on your animate puppet. And as cognos more cogno than I have written both last season and this, Spo doesn't have other strings to pull.
