Miami Heat: Can The Warriors Do What The Heat Did After Adversity?
While this may not be the exact scenario as the Poole and Green situation in Golden State, it might help to add that the Heat were weeks away from the start of the 2022 playoffs and were enduring a four-game losing streak.
Tensions rose and frustrations boiled over, but as Bam Adebayo perfectly described it, the Heat are a brotherhood through it all. Here’s how Butler described Haslem’s role as a leader recently and several months after the fact of that sideline kerfuffle.
"The number one thing that he brings is legit, real leadership... He knows what it takes to win. He's been a champion, and he wants everybody else to feel the same championship caliber ways."
— NBA (@NBA) September 26, 2022
Jimmy Butler on veteran teammate Udonis Haslem.#NBAMediaDay pic.twitter.com/M7me9hqWYE
It takes a humble veteran, such as Haslem, who doesn’t have much to prove as he approaches his final season. His main objective is to prepare his team to focus on basketball—and plenty of organizations are missing that kind of player.
And less we forget, it also takes a respectable front office to mitigate those instances as well. For the Heat to have a front office executive in Pat Riley who tells players what it is, but also has an endless amount of world championships to back up his word, anything besides a winning mentality is intolerable.
What remains true though is incidents do happen, as high emotions are a driving force in basketball. However, it takes a high-class organization to keep situations like this in-house and that’s exactly what the Miami Heat have prided themselves on for such a long time.
And this isn’t to say that the Warriors haven’t been able to do that. Though they claim they won’t, they may now slap a several-game suspension on Green with the revelation of the footage but once he returns to the lineup, it’ll seem as if it never happened.
Although the challenge now lies in how the Warriors respond to adversity. The Warriors’ journey back to the NBA Finals has already hit a rocky start but for the Miami Heat, anything that could widen their window of winning a title this season should be welcomed.
They continue to embody a group of like-minded players and have the talent to compete with any title-contending team out there, like the Warriors.
However and as stated about the Heat’s bouts with adversity, we know they can bounce back better—but do the Warriors also share that characteristic? That’s what we are all dying to find out.