The Miami Heat entered Friday night’s game against the Utah Jazz in 10th place in the Eastern Conference. After handling what might be the best team in the league, they left American Airlines Arena sitting in a tie between quite a few teams for the fourth seed downward.
That’s a wonderful place to be! While it isn’t at the top of the conference, just yet, it’s a far cry from the bottom of the conference, where they were over the first part of the season for a long time.
Here’s the thing though, we or shall I say… I, begged for you to reserve judgement. This was why.
The Miami Heat still haven’t seen themselves fully healthy or whole yet, but they had enough on Friday.
The Miami Heat had a hard time seeing themselves healthy or whole for much of the year up until this point. To be frank, we still haven’t yet, as it seems as soon as we got Goran Dragic back, Tyler Herro went down.
As Coach Spo likes to say though and a rather common Spoism, on Friday, “we had enough”. That’s still something to think about though.
The Miami Heat haven’t had a consistent two-week stretch at any point of this season where all of their guys, all of their impact guys for sure, have been healthy, whole, engaged, and active together. Basically, we still haven’t really seen this team operating at full capacity.
That’s why I asked for a reserved judgement on this year. Though I made no excuses about last year’s NBA Finals and won’t, that’s also why I say that if you don’t think Goran Dragic makes a difference for this Miami Heat team, you aren’t watching the right things.
The Miami Heat are a team. The literal definition of it.
They play better as a unit when all of their parts are there and that isn’t something we can say about a lot of teams. However, again, and as I have said all year, even with what we’ve endured, when right and whole, I like our chances against anybody.
Friday night’s win against what might be the best team in the league proved that.