The Miami Heat have a tall task before themselves as they prepare to tip-off the upcoming season next month. With a league full of talent and the reigning champions being in your conference, also your rivals in the Milwaukee Bucks, the Miami Heat will have to fight and claw to reach their ultimate goal, an NBA Title.
While that is the end goal, there can be little goals in between. For example, Coach Spoelstra has never won the NBA’s Coach Of The Year award.
Blasphemy, right? Exactly.
How has a guy that has the titles and the winning seasons, not won the award? A lot of people point to the Big 3 and say that he should have won, however, coaching that team is harder or as hard as coaching most others.
Either way, that can all be changed though, hopefully. If the Miami Heat can, somehow, win their conference this season, Spo could win his first COY trophy.
With that though, they’ll first have to conquer the Eastern Conference in order to get it done. That feat, though, will be a lot easier said than done.
Miami Heat: Winning East Could Be Recipe For Spoelstra’s 1st NBA COY Award
Not only do they have to deal with the aforementioned Bucks and Giannis Antetokounmpo, but they also have to contend with the Million Dollar Man of a squad that the Brooklyn Nets have assembled. Regardless, when you have three top-25 talents on the same team, they’ll be a problem for anyone.
Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and James Harden certainly count as that. Then there is Philadelphia.
Though a team with issues to solve, they did win the Conference during last year’s regular season. That does say something.
However, that’s also if they decide to run it back. With Ben Simmons looking all but gone from Philly, at the moment, who might they bring back?
With Ben in question, it could be a Damian Lillard type, a CJ McCollum type, or even something from Sacramento. While Lillard would, surely, be more scarier than a Simmons-76ers team, anybody else should make them as dangerous or slightly less.
Basically, slipping and sleeping against Philly can get you beat, Ben Simmons or not. The Miami Heat do have talent too though.
Miami Heat: It Won’t Be Easy, But Winning The East Is Possible For Them
In fact, if you take a total tally of all the talent on any of those teams, the Miami Heat have just as much as any others. The Heat have more talent than Philly, though Joel is the best player of them all.
Milwaukee has the best player as well, but you take the Heat’s three over their next two as well, such as the case with Philly. When it comes to Brooklyn, they have the best two players.
However, it goes Jimmy, then Kyrie. But, after Kyrie, the next eight guys or so are probably all Heat guys.
It’s actually pretty funny how that all plays out. The point of it all is this.
The Miami Heat actually do have enough talent to win the Eastern Conference during the regular season. Whether they want to or not, is a totally different story.
They probably won’t risk injury or burnout to win the regular season title, while they may also choose to save their guys for the postseason run. They should give it a solid shot though.
Not only would it help them along their postseason run, by having better seeding, but it could also be the thing to finally put Spo over the top. He has been a good coach and a deserving one for quite some time now.
If they can win a tough Eastern Conference this year, he’ll go from “deserving” to “reigning” NBA Coach Of The Year. Something improbable is, seemingly, what it’ll take.