Heat playoff chase includes traversing the tank
MIAMI — The added challenge in Miami Heat’s playoff chase is a familiar one, albeit fare more caffeinated this season: traversing the tank.
The Heat are well aware of teams taking the most meaningful moments of the season and turning them into something far less.
Last April, when the Heat needed a Chicago Bulls loss the final day of the season to make the playoffs, the Brooklyn Nets, Chicago’s (and, ironically, Dwyane Wade’s) opponent on closing night, instead sat out most of their regulars for “rest,” as in rest up for the next six months without another game.
This season, it’s as if the tank is on steroids, with the Phoenix Suns, Atlanta Hawks, Dallas Mavericks, Orlando Magic, Sacramento Kings, Memphis Grizzlies, Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks and Charlotte Hornets all emerging from the All-Star break as part of the race to the bottom —nearly a third of the league. (The Nets and Los Angeles Lakers also are mired at the bottom of the standings, but their first-round picks are committed elsewhere.)
For a moment, there at least was candor about the process, when Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, on a podcast, said, “I’m probably not supposed to say this, but, like, I just had dinner with a bunch of our guys the other night, and here we are, you know, we weren’t competing for the playoffs. I was like, ‘Look, losing is our best option.’ [Commissioner] Adam [Silver] would hate hearing that, but I at least sat down and I explained it to them.”
Silver hated it a lot, hitting Cuban with a $600,000 fine. Thus, we essentially have had our final word on the subject for the season.
But the reality doesn’t go away, that amid the Heat’s fight for positioning, there will be nights when playoffrace rivals will be playing against losing-minded opponents.
Tanker vs. tanker is one thing, practically comical with the content (unless you are a paying customer). But tanker vs. playoff contender is another. And there will be a lot of that in coming weeks, not just during the season’s closing days.
It doesn’t mean those opposing players won’t care, or the opposing coaches won’t coach. But in a league where talent trumps, it is relatively simple to stack the odds against those offering actual sweat equity.
What it does is pollute the playoff race.
To be fair, the Heat’s closing schedule includes plenty of those games, including against Phoenix, Sacramento, Chicago, New York and two against Atlanta. But other teams have even more.
For his part, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra will abide by others playing games as long as his team plays it straight up, as the Heat did even when 11-30 last season.
“That doesn’t bother me,” he said. “What would bother me more is if I had a directive last year that I couldn’t play a certain player or I had to play only young players. Or if it was that there was any kind of insinuation from my bosses that it would benefit us to lose. That would bother me a thousand percent more than me worrying about what another team is doing.”
But the tank is profound, profane and promotes a lack of ethics in a sport that now actively is trying to inject itself into the business of sports gambling. (Will teams have to declare they are in “tank” mode before games, just as injury reports assuredly will move more toward NFL obligations and delineations?)
“Honestly,” Spoelstra said, “it just makes me more grateful that I work for an organization like this, where winning is always the priority, even when we’re losing.”
The Heat, of course, appreciate the inherent trap that even tankers slip up. During last season’s playoff chase, they still managed to lose after the All-Star break to the Magic, Knicks and Mavericks.
“Those are dangerous teams sometimes, too,” Spoelstra said, talking tank in terms of trap.
The ultimate danger, though, is to the integrity of the league itself, all these playoff-race games when one side of the equation could care less (except about losing).
iwinderman@sunsentinel .com, Twitter @iraheatbeat, facebook.com/ ira.winderman