To quote sarcastic television personality Simon Cowell, “Wow that’s a shock. It’s like being told Santa Claus isn’t real. Unbelievable.” That was how I’ve been reacting to the Miami Heat dropping five of their last six, and four coming off LeBron misses in the final seconds to either win or go to overtime. First there was the 93-89 loss to Chicago in which the Bulls charged back from being down 9 and LeBron missed a three pointer to tie with seconds left.
Then they beat the lowly Washington Wizards but celebrated the victory by losing 91-86 to the Knicks, a game in which New York came back from being down 15 in the first half and LeBron had the shit stuffed out of him on a go ahead bucket and missed a game tying three.
Then they blew a 24 point lead against the Magic and lost 99-96 when LeBron missed a game tying three. To follow up that, they got blown out 125-95 against the league best Spurs. But surely their losing ways were done since they’d be hosting the Chicago Bulls who were playing the last game of a long road trip and were sure to be weary. Right?
Wrong! The Bulls once again charged back from a 9 point halftime deficit and won 87-86 when LeBron badly missed an awkward left handed lay up over the 7-foot Joakim Noah, only to have Dwyane Wade grab the board and miss a highly contested fade away jumper.
Six games. Four against the NBA’s upper echelon and one against the Knicks. Five losses. This doesn’t surprise me at all since the Heat roster is weak, they haven’t been able to beat teams above .500 all season, and LeBron is not this clutch world beater people want to believe he can be just so he can be like Michael Jordan. The Heat only boss bad teams, hence the one victory over the Wizards in their last six. Other than beating on the bad teams, it has been a rough time for the South Beach Heatles. Let us look at Miami’s record against the top teams in the league:
vs. Boston: 0-3
vs. Chicago: 0-3
vs. Dallas: 0-2
vs. Los Angeles: 1-0
vs. San Antonio: 0-1
That’s 1-9 against the top five teams in the league. Their one victory came against the Lakers in the Christmas game the Lakers publically stated they don’t give a shit about. Other than that they’ve gotten told and suffered defeat after defeat to the NBA’s best. Orlando is still an elite team and beat them twice, and the Knicks will be the 6 seed in the East and roared back from being down big to win. Both of those losses, as well as the two losses to Chicago, came off unclutch moments from LeBron. He keeps taking these threes when he isn’t that good of a three point shooter, and the ball keeps finding its way into his hands despite Dwyane Wade being on the team. Wade is a proven big time player, hence the 2006 Heat championship, but for some reason LeBron James is getting the star treatment on a team that should be under the leadership of a proven winner like Wade. Instead LeBron has claimed the Heat to be his. He said, “I told my team I’m not going to continue to fail them in close games,” following the loss to the Bulls. His team? Even Wade doesn’t know what to think.
After that same loss to the Bulls Wade gave a sad sack interview about how he’s used to having the ball in the fourth and how everybody has to get used to making sacrifices. He has a point. After all he’s done for that organization, why should Wade have to sacrifice being the man? Wade has proven he can destroy teams when it matters most, but for some reason LBJ is the one with the ball in the big moments. But while it is easy to agree with Wade on that, it was what else he said that irks me.
Wade sat stunned and sad at the podium and said, “The Miami Heat are exactly what everyone wanted, losing games. The world is a better place because the Heat is losing.” Way to act like a little baby because people don’t always want to cheer for your team. But it gets better. It came out that people on the roster were actually crying after the loss to Chicago. That basically confirms suspicions that Chris Bosh had been crying after the loss to Orlando then. Who cries after a regular season game in March?
Kevin Garnett only cried because he was wasting his prime carrying a crappy Timberwolves squad. Steve Nash only cried because the Spurs eliminated the Suns from the playoffs and the pursuit for a title was over. The Heat players are crying because they’ve lost four straight regular season games and people are booing them. What type of men are these? Who cries because people are rooting against them and they lost four straight games? Some people are trying to defend the tears by saying this game means a lot to the players, but go back and read the first two sentences of this paragraph. It is one thing to cry because you know your chance to win is nearly gone or you’re wasting your best years on a team destined to fail, but to cry because you can’t handle being cheered against and losing regular season games when you’re still have a chance to be the number 1 seed in your conference is lame and childish.
Seriously, who the hell cries over a regular season game? People are defending it by saying a lot of the losses have been close so it hurts. So? Man up! As a loyal fan, I cried when the Spurs eliminated the Suns in 2007 because that was horrible, but I didn’t cry when the Spurs beat the Suns on Christmas a couple years back off a Roger Mason game winning three. It is just the regular season. Play hard and take it seriously, but don’t act like bitches and cry if things aren’t going the way you hoped. They’re not running roughshod over the league and people aren’t cheering for them. And they’re actually surprised by the negative reception they’re getting.
Why would anybody boo them? LeBron James only toyed with the Cavaliers organization for two years about re-signing only to have an hour long special on ESPN in which he kicked them in the nuts and embarrassed them for the world to see. LBJ only quit on the Cavaliers in the playoffs last year. The Big 3 only danced and flexed on a stage like idiots then partied with Team USA and told anybody who would listen that the Heat would win over 70 games and dominate all. They brought the hate on themselves by acting like clowns. Even then it has gotten worse thanks to things like LeBron tweeting that karma’s a bitch after the Cavs lost by 55 to the Lakers a few months ago. Who would cheer for somebody so dickish?
Now after this losing streak and the crying and the gloomy press conferences, the Heat don’t look like focused and driven competitors prepared to learn from their losses and come back ready to destroy. Instead they look like babies who can’t handle adversity and the fact this season isn’t as easy as they were telling everybody it would be. Even Wade and James are starting to find themselves at odds with one another. This all isn’t surprising to anybody who really follows the NBA and put time into thinking about how this South Beach experiment would turn out, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome to see.
When has one team celebrated all off season like they’d be the rulers of the league only to go 1-18 on clutch shots and fail to beat good teams? And Basketbawful pointed out that the Cavaliers had a better record last year after 63 games than the Heat do this year. I wonder if LeBron finds that funny. I know I certainly do.
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