The AllUCanHeat staff is back again for their weekly Miami Heat roundtable discussion. Today’s topic? Respect.
Let’s cut to the chase. The 2018-19 NBA schedule is officially out… do you think the Miami Heat deserve more than 11 nationally televised games?
Rahmeaun Rahming (@Boneman9000): Honestly? No. The Miami Heat actually improved since last year from nine to eleven games on national television. Although they have abstained from tanking, the Heat just still prove that they’re not a team that the general public wants to see. If they go on another big run as they did in the winter/spring of 2017, I can definitely see one of the cable networks scrambling to try to pick up games as the season goes on.
Kris Keaton (@kmkeaton2): I don’t know if the Heat necessarily deserve more, even though it’d be cool to see them nationally televised more often. It’s just a team that right now lacks star power and are sort stuck in the middle, so 11 games seems more than enough.
Lauren Gewirtz (@laurengewirtz): I would like to see the Heat in more nationally televised games, but is it deserved? That I am not sure of. There are a lot of matchups involving the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors, etc. that people in the across the country would probably rather see. We are talking about television, so at the end of the day it is about the ratings.
Imran Ebrahim (@iebrahim81): Am I disappointed that I won’t be able to turn on my TV and watch the Heat play often? Sure. But Reddit streams cure all. The top ten teams with the most televised games, in order: New Orleans Pelicans (20), Milwaukee Bucks, San Antonio Spurs, Raptors, Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets, Celtics, Philadelphia 76ers, Warriors, Lakers (43). What do they have in common? Most of them have a top-20 player on their roster, a player that’s at the top of their position, or a top seed in the playoffs last year. Surely the schedule was made before the Spurs lost Kawhi Leonard, so you can imagine that was the reasoning behind that as well. So no, I don’t think the Heat deserved more than what they got.