MIAMI — They were built and billed as the Miami Dream Team, a collection of three superstars whose worth and talents could carry a supporting cast of guys named Skippy and Biff to a championship. With Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh, the Heat forged the blueprint for all to follow. All was going well.
Until the Finals. Oops. With James pulling a vanishing act in fourth quarters and the Mavericks showing what a true team effort could do, the Heat went home in bitter disappointment. And waited for another chance.
That chance starts today in Game 1 of the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs against the Knicks.
“No different,” James said of the Heat’s mental approach to the postseason this year. “There’s no more added pressure. Any time you go into the postseason, there’s been pressure for me. It was going into the postseason the past few years, so I’m looking forward to it.”
It is a chance for the Heat to at least start the process of wiping away the 105-95 defeat in Game 6 in their own arena, where the Mavs raised the trophy and showed that some guys a lot of folks thought were too old or too bad could turn a dream into a nightmare.
“I’m excited, definitely excited, just to get another crack at it,” said Bosh, who missed the Heat’s last five regular-season games with a hamstring issue. “Just to be able to compete for a championship, everybody doesn’t get that opportunity, and as much as it hurt last year, things happen for a reason.”
The biggest reason for what happened to the Heat was they played horribly late in games.
“We carried that with ourselves every day, and we remembered that,” Bosh said. “It’s healthy for us because it helps us compete a lot harder to know you can get beat. It changes things totally. You just play differently, so that healthy balance of fear and motivation is perfect for this team.”
The Knicks can provide fear and motivation for the Heat. The offense working around Carmelo Anthony and an array of shooters could scare the stuffing out of anybody. And for added motivation, well, they are the Knicks.
“We have an opponent we really respect. They’ve been playing as well as anybody in the last two months,” said coach Erik Spoelstra, who also addressed the wait from last June 12. “It took us some time to get over it, what happened last year, but experience is a great teacher…. We’ve added some pieces, went through a lot of things that helped make us stronger for this moment.”
Stressed Wade, “It’s like you played the whole season to get to this point. … This is the season, right here, that we’ve been waiting on.The regular season was like a tuning-up process for us. We knew we were good enough. Now we have to see if we can be good enough to win a championship. It’s going to be a long but short 60 days, hopefully, if everything goes right.”