Miami Heat: Recent Skid Doesn’t Impact Title Contending Ability

Miami Heat: Recent Skid Doesn’t Impact Title Contending Ability

To add to the frustrations that spewed over during Wednesday’s loss to Golden State, it may be difficult to imagine Miami being able to clean up their end-of-season messes with just seven regular-season games remaining.

For a team to fall apart during the final stretch of the season and possibly lose their top spot in the conference would make for a terrible headline, nonetheless, the Heat have unfortunately geared themselves in that direction.

Although, there are a few positives that remain. First, the Miami Heat are still NBA title contenders as of today and they’ve earned that respect dating back to their opening night performance against the defending champions.

Have injuries and late-season debuts hindered their chemistry a notch? Possibly.

But if we look towards some of the good things Miami was able to demonstrate, even in the loss to New York, is that they’re a team that’s still led and must be led by Jimmy Butler going forward.

Considering that the Heat played a Tom Thibodeau-led defense that ranks 10th in the league in Defensive Rating, Butler was still able to lead Miami with an efficient 30 points on 11-17 shooting, There is also this.

Throughout the first 36 minutes, he controlled the tempo of a Miami Heat offense that was without Gabe Vincent and Sixth Man of the Year frontrunner, Tyler Herro.

Butler was also as assertive as we’ve seen him since he’s worn a Miami Heat uniform and despite the end result, this was a tremendous response to the heavy criticism he’s recently received in regards to his leadership.