Steph Curry is a play in legend but doesn’t hold a candle to 3 time defending play in champ Bam Adebayo

Jimmy Butler pulled off the most long distance lateral in all of sports. Legendary.

A common misconception is that 1) Pat Riley is the GM and 2) he makes all the decisions. Roster changes are actually voted on by the Heat front office.

The Heat, for the past few years, have been making personnel decisions collectively among a group including owner Micky Arison, team CEO Nick Arison, president Pat Riley, general manager Andy Elisburg, assistant general manager and vice president/basketball operations Adam Simon and coach Erik Spoelstra. Five Reasons Network reported that Alonzo Mourning also has a seat at the decision-making table.

When members of the group don’t collectively agree on something initially – as was the case during deliberations about what to offer in a trade for Kevin Durant last summer - they work on trying to come up with unanimity. Ultimately, as owners, the Arisons have the final say, though Five Reasons said Nick Arison, specifically, has final say.

This isn’t to say the Pat is completely blameless, but most people aren’t aware that Pat isn’t actually the main driving force

He put together a team that went to the finals twice in three years just before this run of mediocrity. They’re just not going to blow up and rebuild by trading away their assets, and the plays for stars just haven’t worked out so far. They’re in the hardest spot in the league to be in. No true superstar but a team full of good players who play hard and are coached by a floor raiser who keeps them from being bad enough to improve through the draft. Eventually they will get another star and be right back in the hunt.

I mean honestly the play in a solid outcome. It’s better than missing the entire playoffs. And if you lose then you get a good draft pick. It’s a good decision by the front office

B-b-but their CULTURE!

The standard is the standard

Just tank so you can get a Jokic or Giannis or Shai or Luka like the Nuggets, Bucks, Thunder, and Lakers did. Can’t win without a top 3 pick

Brother yall have been to two finals this decade. The steelers have won a single postseason in a decade

The Treadmill of Mediocrity is alive and well in the NBA.

Typically you have to either be a legit contender or bottom out in the NBA lest you find yourself on the Treadmill of Mediocrity, paying your fringe star players too much to fill out the rest of the roster, which keeps you good but not great and missing out on potential superstars in the lottery.

You’re not good enough to beat the best, but you’re just ever so slightly better than “the rest”. While it sounds like you’re a stone or two away, you’re really just stuck in the middle with little ways up the ladder unless you commit to a tank or get incredibly lucky.

The difference is no one called Tomlin the best coach in the league.

its illegal to play rookies in Miami, gotta wait for year ²⁄₃, unless its a center then it takes longer

The organisation wouldn’t let them I think

This team has not legitamate attempt at tanking since Lebron left, we either make the playoffs as a mid team or we missed it entirely

I think it’s a weirdo ego thing Pat got, but I don’t blame him cause even the hardcore fans need to realize that we had no business being in the finals in 2020 and 2023, fun to watch but was not supposed to happen

Yes they should, but our front office is unfortunately too by-the-book

They’re just against it as an organizational philosophy. Granted, when you run to the Finals as an 8 seed there’s reason to think you always have enough even though they probably don’t after trading Jimmy.

Heat are too hot to be tanking

They can’t do that while they have Spo as the coach. Tanking teams usually fire their winning coach for a newbie and trade their top player for picks.

I’m genuinely curious how 8 to 10 teams are supposed to tank? Are all of them getting the 1st pick? Otherwise there’s a huge difference between the 1st pick and the 7th pick

That’s not heat culture

Rebuild ≠ tanking

Riley is one of the winningest people in the history of the sport. They don’t believe in tanking and it’s served them well enough to make the finals 6 times in the last 20 years with 3 wins along the way. Measure the performance over many years. They know what they’re not going to put all their chips in for, just because they’ve not hit on all of their plays to bring in more talent doesn’t mean they deserve to be criticized like the bottom feeding teams.

This team was never gonna be great on paper. A bunch of high end role players but no number one guy to bring everything together. The only gripe I have with Spo was not playing the younger guys more once it became clear that opposing teams figured out the new offense.

It’s the front office. Can’t really blame Spo or the players with working with what they got

Spo deserves literally nothing but praise Miami has done nothing but over-perform under Spo every single season.

Nobody expected either of the recent Miami teams to make the finals, they were both trash on paper

The only blame Spo could get is that he is too good at his job and takes middling teams into playoff runs. By all rights the rosters he gets should be getting lottery picks of some sort rather than being stuck in middling purgatory.

So far I’m happy we missed out on the superstars, dont think having Lillard, KD or even Giannis rn would do us that much good.

Sadly for us, most of the reason we are a big destination is because guys wanna play with Bam, but any superstar worthy trade that doesnt include him would just lead to us gutting our team.

The heat had a great strategy when free agency was still a thing and it worked, the CBA killed free agency and now the team doesnt know what to do anymore

caleb martin looked all nba vs the celtics and all shanghai vs denver, shit was crazy

The bulls have made the conference finals once since 1999 and have only made the playoffs twice in the last 10 years.

*but actually wins the play in game

Yeah, bum ass Spo cant make the playoffs with 30 games of Herro, Bam, Norm whos just a delusional Lou Williams and a defense first PG who cant defend anyone over 6’3 /s

Look at the rosters for both the Heat and Celtics in 2023 and guess who won

Been telling y’all Erik is not as good as y’all think he is