Less #Culture, Better #Planning for Heat

The Scavenger’s Miami Heat success story all-but-officially ended with five minutes left in Sunday’s fourth quarter in Toronto, checking out for Dwyane Wade with the score tied at 93 and exactly five minutes left in the fourth quarter. It was reasonable that Rodney McGruder wouldn’t play beyond that; after all, while it’s entirely unclear which players Erik Spoelstra should and does trust at this late stage of the season, the one he absolutely always and rightly will is Dwyane Wade. Spoelstra first surprised me back in the 2015-16 season, after Wade missed a buzzer three-pointer against Charlotte, with one of the coach’s sharpest quotes, that he would go to his grave with Wade taking the last shot at the end of the game. It is a statement Spoelstra has repeated frequently since, most recently after Miami fell in Minnesota as Wade missed from deep just prior to the gun. And they remain words to live by, regardless of what the math may have sometimes said.

So, no, there’s absolutely no issue with Wade entering and McGruder exiting there, nor with the plan to get Wade the ball on the final possession of Sunday’s regulation, with the contest tied at 103. It didn’t work in part because the official gave the ball to the wrong guy, Dion Waiters, allowing Kawhi Leonard to claw on to Wade like a crowd of rabid fans in the center of Shanghai. And it didn’t work in part because nothing really has for the Heat this frustrating, forgettable season, other than that one Wade miracle against the Warriors, which feels a lot like what the Dolphins did to the eventual champion Patriots with that fancy lateral play — a flash of fun signifying nothing. McGruder would re-enter, by the way, with 39.6 seconds left in overtime, subbing in for James Johnson with the Heat down seven. After that garbage time, he would be tossed into the trash, sent to waivers to get the Heat under the luxury tax if someone claims him, since this is a squad that ownership decided, quite correctly, didn’t warrant the allocation of even more money and the suffering of other related penalties.

One minute you’re playing critical minutes in an elimination game as the definition of #HEATCulture

The next….

This hasn’t been a great season.

— Five Reasons Sports Network (@5ReasonsSports) April 7, 2019

But what did this season warrant exactly?

And how was it so doomed from the start?

Those are the burning questions to take into the offseason. That’s what the Heat must determine. That’s the self-scouting they must embark upon, engage in, and endure. How did this go so horribly wrong, with so many competent people in charge, in the most competent organization in South Florida sports by a landslide no Democrat in Broward County has ever enjoyed, in one of the smartest and most stable organizations in all of professional sports for an eternity? How did they bungle this so badly? How could they sign so many slightly above-average players to such exorbitant agreements — with none of those players really wanted on the floor at the end of games that mattered? How could they misread the market so significantly? How could they be so stubborn as to continue to push forward this season when pulling back may have made more sense, only to see this team win more than three straight games only once, and now slump on the precipice of losing six straight games at the finish?

How could they not learn from the #HeatLifer catastrophe — a backhanded slap at LeBron James that backfired badly when they later pushed the franchise’s only  truly irreplaceable personality to justifiably storm off — to spend several years pushing the #HeatCulture narrative, only to get played by it, giving James Johnson one of the odder contracts in franchise history after he kept quoting the catchphrase on social media, and giving Waiters the second-oddest after he did the same (even in a column in Players Tribune), only for Waiters to wait on ankle surgery and return in something hardly resembling Riley’s Heat condition? Yes, #HeatCulture exists, in the player development, in the work ethic. But even that slogan can only go so far, as we saw Sunday with McGruder who, for his weaknesses, embodied it as much as anyone but Udonis Haslem on the current roster. No one should blame the Arisons for wanting to get under, even if it meant gifting Wayne Ellington and his 12.1 points per game on 38.1 percent three-point shooting to the Detroit Pistons, a playoff-chasing rival; even if meant the Heat seeming to suppress Kelly Olynyk’s minutes during the team’s choppy January to avoid a tax kicker (he ended up exceeding it); even if it meant cutting against the #HeatCulture narrative to cut the gritty guard McGruder (a starter for too much of this season) with two games left.

Wayne Ellington has played 25 games in Detroit.

He played 25 games in Miami.

Miami: 8.4 ppg

Detroit: 12.1 ppg

— Five Reasons Sports Network (@5ReasonsSports) April 8, 2019

That’s not the issue.

The issue is that we cannot possibly justify them paying it.

Not for what that payroll has produced — basically a .500 record over three years.

Some in our network have tried to make excuses for the Heat, pretty much all season, and even now.

And yes, you can line up some of them.

It wasn’t ideal for the Heat’s trade ambitions to be aired during training camp, with that extending into the season until Jimmy Butler was finally sent to Philadelphia — that uncertainty for players (and likely some unhappiness) made this a particularly challenging team to coach. The injuries have hurt, particularly the extended absence of Goran Dragic, who should still be appreciated more than he is, even if his presence makes it more complicated to allow Justise Winslow to flourish. And sure, the timing of Winslow and Josh Richardson getting sidelined was terrible, with Richardson not just once but twice. Yes, some of the officiating of late has seemed to cut against the Heat more than it’s worked for them.

But think of all that’s broken right.

Who expected Hassan Whiteside to handle himself so maturely this season after the way last season ended, especially after he got shuttled to the bench? Credit to him, and to the Heat, for that happening. But if you were told that Whiteside would be a consistent contributor throughout, that Wade at age 37 after a summer of uncertainty would still be scoring 21 in the final week, and that Winslow and Bam Adebayo would make such noticeable strides, would you envision the Heat slipping in the standings from sixth to ninth or maybe even 10th? Falling from 44-38 to no better than 40-42, and possibly 38-44? That they would miss the playoffs, while mostly trying, in this conference, falling behind the rosters that Brooklyn, Detroit and Orlando are running out there?

No, you wouldn’t.

And so it can’t be excused. We can excuse the Dolphins, the Marlins, the Panthers. They haven’t known better. Or, they’ve known better, but they haven’t done better. Over and over. We can’t excuse this franchise. We can’t accept it from this one. This one is our only hope. This one doesn’t rely on gimmicky, unattainable slogans, this one doesn’t try to paper its problems by compelling its fans to chase squirrels (look, Vice Jerseys! hey #OneLastDance!); this one has never acted as if mediocrity is enough. (The old Heat would laugh as Orlando celebrating a Southeast Division title tonight.). This one doesn’t put itself where it is, ending a season prior to America’s Tax Day, then making news by cutting a player two games prior to the end of the season reduce its own NBA tax. This one, with five minutes left in a critical game, has at least five players its coach can count on. Or at least three. Night after night. Play after play. And yet, too often, it was Wade. Only Wade.

The 2018-19 Miami Heat.

Just good enough to not be quite good enough.

— Five Reasons Sports Network (@5ReasonsSports) April 7, 2019

But, no, no one should get fired. No one should get reassigned. No one should get prematurely retired, certainly not the person who made basketball matter in this place. This braintrust has earned enough trust over time to avoid such a call, at least for this offseason. That, however, can’t last forever, because it never does in sports. Joe Dumars built a champion in Detroit, and then he brought in chumps, and then he got chomped. There are countless such examples. We are concluding #OneLastDance, and that should finish in a blaze of Wade glory. Loyal No. 3 has earned the right to take every single shot he wants the last two games, from anywhere at any time. He’s the one — other than flashes of the Kids — who has made this season somewhat tolerable, and he’s done it appearance after appearance for a relative pittance, and we shudder to think what next season will be like when he isn’t around to offer Heat supporters a nostalgic distraction, a pump-faking testament to what was once so good here. But after #OneLastDance will come #OneLastChance for this Miami Heat front office, to make the fans believe again. Because right now, that belief is as out the door as #HeatCulture and the symbol of this season — the likable but limited Rodney McGruder.

Ethan J. Skolnick (@EthanJSkolnick) has covered the Miami Heat since most of Miami Heat Beat was in diapers — and reminds them of such, in irritating fashion, every day.