Taking the "Heat's" Temperature

The Miami Herald's Barry Jackson turned to a "long-time Eastern Conference scout":

“Let’s start with who’s better. I see six teams for sure: New York, Cleveland, Orlando, Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee. Philadelphia is better if they’re healthy. So I would say the Heat’s a solid play-in team, in the same ballpark as Indiana and potentially better than Boston. They’re not 10 or 11; they’re more like 7, 8 or 9.

In other words, just where we have been for the last two, three, I forget, years. In other, other words, we have made no relative progress in the conference despite the East being more Least than ever.🤦‍♂️

“It’s around a .500 team. If they won 45, it would be a great year. They’re not bad, but they’re not good. Chicago is mediocre; the Heat is maybe a little better than mediocre. They have three very good NBA players with [Bam] Adebayo, [Tyler] Herro and Powell. We’ll see about Ware. Andrew Wiggins is meh at this point.”

I nicknamed them the "Cold 45's" for their decade+ average record; until last year that is when their  37-45 record dropped them a caliber to the "Cold 44's". Now, according to this scout, 45-37 would be "a great year." In other words, no absolute progress in the Association as a whole. In other words, we are stuck in Middlesbrough, we are walking in quicksand, we are treading water, we are paying the luxury tax for a mid-sized car, parts of which are "very good", but which cannot morph into a Mercedes-Benz. And what if one of those very good parts breaks? Then the whole thing has to be taken to the repair shop, and performance will drop even further. It is a grim but realistic outlook.