Miami Heat 2012-13 Season Preview
Great Theories Regarding Professional Basketball by Steve McPherson I can pretty easily boil down the Heat to a simple mathematical equation that you all learned in junior high school. mo’ money = mo’ problems For years, the team associated with LeBron James, whether the Cavs or the Heat, has had to contend with having what should be the best player in the game and not winning the title. But no more. That monkey is off James’ back, but in shrugging it off, he’s dropped it onto the Heat. When James was on the Cavs, we could go around in circles arguing about whether their failures were primarily the fault of James or the fault of his supporting cast. The Heat’s meltdown against the Mavs in the Finals was placed squarely on James’ shoulders, but now the pressure points have shifted. The Heat appear to have only improved this offseason. Despite their championship pedigrees, the team let Eddy Curry and Ronny Turiaf go. To compensate, they only signed the league’s all-time leader in 3-pointers made in Ray Allen and got a hell of a deal on Rashard Lewis. But getting better will mean nothing without another ring. If winning a championship puts a target on any regular team’s back, the Heat’s championship has given other team’s missile lock on them. And there are concerns: they’re still thin in the frontcourt (in spite of Dexter Pittman); Wade has shoved aside injury woes for years now, but there’s a real possibility he will suddenly just fall apart bringing the ball up court one of these times; and the real injury threat: although LeBron has been an ironman in the NBA, a significant injury to him would completely derail this team and quick. Still, you could do a lot worse than live by the James, die by the James.
Jesus Christ Your Team Sucks by Jared Dubin There are plenty of bad things about the Miami Heat. In fact, there are some straight up awful things about the Miami Heat. It’s really hard to choose just one thing to be the worst. We can start with the way their core group was brought together in 2010; the possible conspiracy, The Decision, the laser-light celebration smoke show before they’d even stepped on the court for a game. We’d then move on to the way they just keep getting reliable veterans to sign up for the cause while taking less money than they’re offered elsewhere. After that, we’d go to the way Erik Spoelstra just absolutely refuses to give a straight answer to press questions. And of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that horrid Public Address Announcer and the way he screams “DOS MINUTOS” whenever there are two minutes left in the half and makes everybody on the planet want to claw their eyeballs out of the socket. I could go on all day. I really could keep listing terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad things about the Miami Heat. But I won’t.