It
all started in the 2004-2005 season, a year in which Dwyane Wade pleaded for
some help, and the team responded in kind giving up a moderately bright future
in exchange for one of the most dominant players in NBA history, the mammoth
Shaquille O’Neal. The trade included the versatile and still young Lamar Odom,
Caron Butler, Brian Grant, and a first round pick. While the trade forced the
Heat to give away a moderately promising future, what they got back ended up being
the key piece to a title. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be that year as
Wade went on to get injured in the Eastern Conference finals against the
Detroit Pistons, and Detroit came back to beat the Heat in game seven 88-82.
However the next season saw Dwyane Wade achieve his
vindication. The Heat re-upped their lineup acquiring Jason Williams, Antoine
Walker, James Posey, and Gary Payton. When O’Neal went down with an injury
colliding with Ron Artest, the Heat began to struggle. As the team languished,
head coach Stan Van Gundy resigned his post for what were supposedly family
reasons (although many have speculated otherwise) Pat Riley stepped in to take
the reigns. In what some analysts call possibly the greatest playoff performance
in NBA history, Dwyane Wade rallied the Heat back to the Eastern Conference
finals and redeemed himself by aiding the team to a defeat of the defending
Eastern Conference champion Pistons to lead the team into the NBA finals. Once
there, the Heat proceeded to drop the first two games to a formidable Dallas
Mavericks team. It wasn’t until the fourth quarter of game 3 when the Heat
turned the tide, and never looked back. Riding a scorching hot Wade averaging
34.7 points, 7.8 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 2.67 steals, and 1.00 blocks per game the
Heat performed one of the NBA finals greatest comebacks rallying back to win the
next four games in a row. Finally they had claimed their elusive title, and the
gamble for Shaq had paid off.
However the next season was not so fruitful. Injuries
plagued the team, and while they won the division, they floundered into the 4th
seed in the playoffs and were quickly dispatched in the first round by the
Bulls 4-0. Things only got worse from there. The following season much of the
championship squad was gone. Wade suffered another injury-plagued season, Pat
Riley relinquished his role as head coach to have knee surgery, Alonzo Mourning
tore a patellar tendon and missed the rest of the season, and a very vocally
disgruntled Shaquille O’Neal moaned and groaned his way into a requested trade
to the Phoenix Suns. Despite the team winning him a title, and trading him as
he asked to be, to the team he asked to be traded to, Shaq still found it
necessary to publicly berate the organization and fans before leaving and after
leaving Miami. A great consolation after the miserable season, Miami netted the
second pick in the NBA draft, but after watching Derrick Rose go off the board
in the first pick to the Chicago Bulls who had eliminated them from the
playoffs in embarrassing fashion the Heat drafted the highly touted Michael
Beasley, who needless to say, had an underwhelming NBA career in Miami while
Rose quickly became a superstar.
Heat fans would spend the next two years wondering what they
would do to get back to being a championship caliber team. The fans knew that
time was running short; because with a player like Dwyane Wade, you had to show
you were willing to be competitive if you wanted to keep an all-star of his
caliber around. Wade in turn was making sure everybody else knew that he
wouldn’t be signing an extension until the team did just that. The organization
was not sending encouraging signs. While Wade’s contract was due to expire in
2010, Pat Riley made it clear that until the 2010 offseason the Heat would be
making no major changes to become more competitive. This started a kind of game
of chicken if you will, with Wade publicly threatening to leave, and Riley
constantly reminding everybody he wouldn’t make a move until his contract was
up in 2010. The whole city held their breath for two years wondering if their
beloved superstar would even be around by the time the organization was ready
to move on anything.
By the time the 2010 offseason rolled around, Heat fans were
in a panic. Off the court problems with his wife and kids made it look
incredibly likely that Wade would end up in Chicago along with the superstar
they missed out on, Derrick Rose, and the team that had handed them some considerable
heartache. Wade’s kids were in Chicago, Wade himself was from Chicago, and
there was little doubt his presence in the windy city would make the Bulls an
instant competitor. He was going through a very messy divorce that could have
seen his wife getting custody of his children, and moving them to their home in
Chicago. Wade had recently left Converse to join Michael Jordan’s Jumpman
brand, his divorce proceeding were getting messy, and the prospect was growing
everyday the Heat stood silent that Wade would end up going north to be with
his kids in the Windy City. To make matters worse, Beasley was traded to
Minnesota, and the roster was stripped of almost every player, making a
non-competitive team even less so.
Stealing the headlines from anything Heat fans were going
through at the time was what was happening in Cleveland. LeBron James was tired
of waiting. The efforts to bring in Shaq and Antwan Jamison failed to take the
Cavs over the hump, and it was clear that they needed to make a big move in order
to keep King James near his hometown. The problem was, nobody wanted to go near
his hometown. Amare Stoudamire didn’t want to go to Cleveland. Chris Bosh
didn’t want to go to Cleveland. In fact, none of the big names wanted to go to
Cleveland. As it became obvious that nobody was going to Ohio to help LeBron,
the realization started to sink in. LeBron had to leave to get help. A national
outcry began for a city plagued with losing teams that was getting ready to lose
a homegrown talent that was the best in his sport. Lost in the shuffle, was any
empathy for another city getting ready to lose its most beloved superstar.
Unlike the outcry for James to stay in Cleveland, the nation was looking
forward to seeing Dwyane Wade playing side-by-side Derrick Rose in a Bulls
uniform. Nobody had a tear of compassion for the Magic City.
Then came the key domino that changed everything. Pat Riley
had signed Chris Bosh. While it seemed innocuous to most, I was telling
everybody, the King is coming to South Florida. Of course, most people thought
he was going to New York, or Chicago, or taking the multitude of other offers.
For a while as a longtime Heat fan myself, I was forced to play the role of the
rabidly insane homer in order to say what I thought was the overwhelming
likelihood. How did I know based on the Bosh signing alone? Once Bosh signed in
Miami, it was clear Dwyane Wade was going to finally resign. With the Heat
having dumped an entire roster’s worth of salary, and two major superstar
already playing in Miami, if Lebron wanted the surest shot at a title there was
no way he could risk allowing Pat Riley to use the rest of his cash to put a
team around them that could lock him out of a title again no matter where he
went. They had the money, they had the superstars, and either Riley was going
to spend that cash on James, or he would spend that cash on a supporting cast
that could stop him. There was no collusion involved, no under the table talks
necessary. There was simply no other choice LeBron could make that had a higher
probability of success once those two guys were together on a team with that
much cash left to spend. It was either join them, or take the chance of getting
beat by them. He simply couldn’t take the chance. It was really that simple and
obvious for me. While opting against simply making the announcement on his
website as he previously planned, he took ESPN up on their less well thought
out plan to announce it on national television. Thus, the decision was born. It
was a good decision, announced by a really, really bad one.
In what was supposed to be a very normal and ordinarily
predictable practice for the Heat marketing team, a pep rally was scheduled to
announce the formation of the historically formed team that was a good two to
three years in the making. The city rejoiced. Their beloved superstar had
stayed after years of threatening to leave, and offseason events that made it
an incredibly likely scenario. They had obtained a great all-star caliber big
man alongside him in Chris Bosh, and most of all, the King was coming. In a
city like Miami, it was inevitable you would see the party of all parties
celebrating this. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a local event was also
broadcast on the national media. With multiple cities scorned having missed the
prospect of obtaining the best player in basketball, the media saw the perfect
reason to create a villain, and a pep rally that was supposed to let the steam
out of years of panic and worry, turned into a rub-it-in-your-face festival
overnight.
The newly formed big three did something that, had it not
been for the disdain involved in everything, should have been widely applauded.
They did the rare professional sports act of taking less money in order to win
a title. This was wasted on the public’s perception of the Heat becoming the
NBA’s bad guys. The following season that brought enormous amounts of pressure
like the sports world had never seen, and in the face of another disappearing
act by LBJ in the finals, as well as a Dallas Mavericks team I had unwittingly
speculated earlier in the season was the deepest team in the league, the Mavs
defeated the Heat in one of the sweetest revenges I had ever seen in modern
sports. They had finally gotten them back for their incredible collapse at the
hands of Dwyane Wade and Shaq in 2006 to win their first title. That offseason,
the critics went to town on the franchise, and Lebron took as big a mass media
beating one could ever take. The city of Miami got caught in the crossfire as
again, little sympathy was shown and the city was vilified alongside him.
With another offseason to round out the kinks, Riley turned
his attention to the bench and solidified the rest of the team a bit. With a
healthy Mike Miller returning, the drafting of Norris Cole, and the acquisition
of Shane Battier, Miami was much more ready to be title bound, and that’s
exactly what they were. Though people doubted their ability to win without an
established and proven center, the smarts of Erik Spoelstra and the versatility
of their players helped them defy the odds. They proved they could play shut
down perimeter defense against Carmelo Anthony and the Knicks in a series that
saw Amare Stoudamire and Jeremy Lin on milk cartons. They proved they could
beat a big physical team with greats bigs and lots of depth like the Pacers,
They proved they could handle a team with a great point guard and lots of big
men like the Celtics, and reinforced their ability to stop a team with an
intimidating frontcourt and big time superstars in the Oklahoma City Thunder en
route to LeBron James & Chris Bosh’s first NBA titles, and it was additions
like Mike Miller and Shane Battier who made all the difference in the end. They
answered every question they could possibly answer. If you can’t respect what
Heat fans had to go through to get here, and what the players had to do to earn
that title, what in the world of sports could you possibly respect?
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