I just came from the store and was thinking of the game and the "Heat" generally before I saw the Big O's tweet. My thought was, "The tenth place team in a 82-game league should not make the post-season, should not have a chance to make the post-season." It devalues the "very expensive ticket" that fans pay for those 82. Then I thought, but we're not tenth, we're seventh (at this very particular minute in San Antonio), and we have a winning record. But my, and the Big O's, point about the fans is not dulled. He tweets that it's "disrespectful." Maybe I've written that too, I don't remember. I'll go further now: it makes the purchaser of that "very expensive ticket" feel like a chump, like you've been had. At least I, a purchaser of three tickets for $2000 to a December game, feel foolish.
The Big O has an exquisitely sharp pencil. He cuts through the skin and the callous and the fat to reveal the deepest truth. Obviously, I agree with the ticket price point. I had not thought of "Heat" fans turning on Jimmy, but the Big O may well be correct there as well. Except that, for me at least, a deep playoff run will not patch over the truth this time. Jimmy is exasperating for a "Heat" fan. All of the missed games, year after year after year. And this season at least, I don't remember his play down the regular season stretch last season, he has not been able to put the team on his shoulders and carry them. The Big O in a tweet just last week or so wrote that Jimmy is no longer capable of that. But, he is going to be asking 601 Biscayne to make him the highest paid player in the Association this summer. Two play-ins for a team with the highest-paid player easily could turn South Florida fans into South Philadelphia fans.
Jimmy's 20 points in 40 mins Thursday in an excruciating, close loss at home to Phila. is the basketball definition of a mirage stat line. It may have looked like he was there, but he wasn't. Today, he had 27 points and missed a 3W by 3 rebounds and two assists, a very impactful Jimmy. Yet, as Anthony Chiang of the Miami Herald writes,
“Sunday’s game wasn’t very competitive either…”
(The mobile version of Chiang’s article has the above quote, with which I agree. However, the editors apparently experienced some cognitive dissonance with a two-point loss and changed, or had Chiang change, the sentence to read, “Sunday’s game was decided in the first half...")
I think the original Chiang was right. When the losing team's biggest lead is two points, and their last lead was 5-4, not even a two-point loss is truly competitive. After I posted the Fat Lady I continued to follow the game, saw it get down to 8 or maybe 6, but at no point did I think Miami would come all the way back to win. It was close at the very end but it wasn't competitive.
And, as I wrote above, even, in the unlikely event that a Miami May Miracle happens again, it will not cause me 82-game amnesia again. Of course, I will be cheering them on all the way, however long that may be. But I'm not forgetting this centrality: This team does not have enough.
Heat 4-ever.