The 2023-24 NBA season is near, so at the end of another eventful summer we take our annual trip too close to the sun, daring you to stand the swelter of these views. This is Hot Takes We Might Actually Believe.
The Miami Heat closed last regular season with a negative net rating, 10th in the Eastern Conference. They got waxed by the Atlanta Hawks in their play-in tournament opener and trailed the Chicago Bulls in the final minutes of the elimination game, needing a career game from Max Strus just to earn the final playoff berth.
Then, they mutated into a juggernaut, bullying the Milwaukee Bucks, New York Knicks and Boston Celtics en route to the NBA Finals. Jimmy Butler made his annual postseason superstar transformation, and his undrafted teammates played out of their minds, boosting a bottom-six offense into a top-six outfit overnight.
So, which were the real Heat? Over the summer, they operated as though the playoffs were the fluke, not the regular season. They let Strus and Gabe Vincent walk and spent months figuring Damian Lillard would fall in their lap. When he didn’t, they protested like a team that knew it needed an upgrade and failed to land one.
When Heat coach Erik Spoelstra says, “I think we’re deeper than we were last year,” he sounds like a man trying to speak success into existence. Maybe it works, or maybe there is a tipping point, and this is theirs.
Miami performed like a sub-.500 team last regular season and lost two starters, replacing both with Josh Richardson, who played on five teams in four seasons between stints on South Beach, and a prayer. The Heat could easily miss the playoffs this season, as they nearly did last season, before Caleb Martin’s brief flirtation with stardom highlighted a host of outlying playoff performances for an anomalous eighth seed.
The Bucks and Celtics, who respectively outbid Miami’s trade offers for Lillard and Jrue Holiday, are clearly the class of the East, and the Cleveland Cavaliers, who stole Strus from the Heat, are too talented to falter. The Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets and Detroit Pistons are the only three teams in the conference with little to no chance of making the playoffs. So, the nine teams between are vying for five playoff spots.
Are reigning league MVP Joel Embiid’s Philadelphia 76ers really going to miss the playoffs? The Atlanta Hawks have made the playoffs three years running and should be better under new coach Quin Snyder. The New York Knicks owned the East’s second-best record after acquiring Josh Hart at the trade deadline.
You run out of guaranteed playoff real estate real quick.
Miami’s rotation includes Butler, Kevin Love and Kyle Lowry, all at least age 34, and the oldest is a starting point guard. Lose Lowry, and the Heat hand the ball to Tyler Herro, whose response to watching the playoff run from the sidelines and expecting to be traded all summer will be … interesting. Lose Love, and Miami’s best backup big boils down to Thomas Bryant or Orlando Robinson. Lose Butler, and all hell breaks loose.
Butler has not played more than 65 games in a season since the 2016-17 campaign, his last in Chicago. The other Bulls from those days that Tom Thibodeau ran ragged — Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah and Luol Deng — have long since passed their prime. For more of last season, Butler battled soreness in the same knee that required meniscus surgery in 2018, before logging significantly more playoff minutes than anyone.
Miami is a team teetering on too far gone, further from a Finals appearance than four months ago. A 25th-rated offense that loses two of its best shooters is a recipe for regression. This will not bother the Heat, since they prefer to be counted out, but it is harder to defy the odds over a full 82 than it is for an 18-game playoff sprint.
It will be worse in the Western Conference, where the reigning champion Denver Nuggets and reinforced Phoenix Suns might be the only playoff locks. Three of these players will not make the playoffs: Stephen Curry, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, Luka Dončić, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Ja Morant, Zion Williamson, Anthony Edwards and De’Aaron Fox. The play-in tournament will feature four of them fighting for two spots.
Last year, Gilgeous-Alexander, Williamson and Dončić missed the playoffs, and all three of their teams (presuming health) should be significantly better, meaning some very good teams will watch from home.
You can conjure reasons most any West team falls short of the playoffs. Morant’s suspension could sink the Memphis Grizzlies. The Sacramento Kings might resort to being the Sacramento Kings. The pairing of Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns can crater the Minnesota Timberwolves. LeBron turns 39 years old two months into the Los Angeles Lakers’ season. The LA Clippers cannot keep Leonard and Paul George on the court. Four of the five All-Stars on the Golden State Warriors’ roster will be 34 or older by season’s end.
None has as many questions to answer as the Heat, and it is not close. Only five teams failed to reach the playoffs following a Finals appearance — the post-Michael Jordan Bulls, post-Shaquille O’Neal Lakers, post-LeBron Heat and Cavaliers, and post-Kevin Durant Warriors. Strus and Vincent are not them, but the league is deeper than ever before, the play-in tournament increases the likelihood of a seventh seed missing the playoffs, and we have never before seen a legitimate eighth seed defend a conference title, much less a squad that got worse.
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