Miami Heat: How Charlotte Game Illustrates Top Management Rating

The Miami Heat compete. That’s year in and year out.

They don’t take breaks. Pat Riley and the Miami Heat don’t rebuild as other franchises do, they retool.

It’s been that way for a long time and will continue to be that way for a while. After the conclusion of the Big 3 Era, which speaks for itself and goes without saying, they continued to fight hard and though they haven’t managed to build a title contender since, name a team that’s been in better shape post-Superstar loss than they have been?

We’ll wait. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone that has managed to transition better than they did from LeBron James and that era.

With that and with something that has caused quite the little firestorm in the last several days, a ranking of the NBA’s best management teams by ESPN, it really makes you wonder. First though, here’s the evidence in question (subscription required).

When you look at this list, it’s really no shocker that the Miami Heat manage to find themselves in the top slot. Here’s what really does it.

The fact that they have consistently managed to overachieve with less, in all facets, is the thing that separates them. Follow along here.

In the era post-LeBron, the Miami Heat were without Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade left for a period, and competed with a team that was led by Goran Dragic, an official Miami Heat Lifer none the less, as their best player.

There are numerous, but do you need more? Take a few years ago, the NBA Bubble Year, where that Jimmy Butler-led Miami Heat team went from a middle seed in the Eastern Conference to NBA Finals contenders against a bigger and more talented Los Angeles Lakers team.

Yes, they lost, but not before the Miami Heat and Jimmy Butler showed the entire world that they weren’t a joke. You know, that’s the Finals that saw Jimmy Butler go toe to toe with The Chosen One, literally.

Lastly, if you look at the things that don’t tend to matter to everyone else, NBA Summer League or the Preseason, for example, the Miami Heat show up then too.

With the big comeback victory led by a Max Strus shot in the NBA Summer League as the smaller point here, as that happened too, take the comeback win against Charlotte in the preseason on Monday.

Again the preseason, it’s nothing huge. However, it’s indicative of the larger point at hand.

Down by 12 with just three minutes or so in the game, the Miami Heat proceeded to come back and all at the hands of the Sioux Falls All-Stars. Basically, most of the guys that led that double-digit comeback for the Heat are exhibit-10 guys and won’t be playing in Miami, but for the G-League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce.

The insight to bring those guys in and also, that thing that motivated them to force that comeback and eventually, leading to victory, is the reason why the Miami Heat sit atop this list. If it came out every year, they would have a chance to be at the top… every single year.

Yea, they poo-poo the Culture every chance they get. One thing is for certain though, it’s real and if every team had it, they too would win as much as the Heat have across their, relatively, young NBA existence.

But they don’t. And that’s because every team isn’t the Heat and Culture isn’t something that’s just made up, it’s the reason they are who they are and why the Heat are, indeed, the best management group in the league.