Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Heat fall to Magic
What Riley thinks of team soon to be revealed
116-107 defeat is second in a row.
MIAMI — If I’m Pat Riley, I don’t trust this wonderful Heat run. I embrace it. I hug the heck out of it. But I don’t, for instance, package Justise Winslow, who can’t shoot just yet, for the former All-Star in town Monday, Orlando forward Serge Ibaka. I don’t overvalue James Johnson at this peak.
I don’t overestimate Dion Waiters just yet (though come back in April)).
But this is what makes Pat Riley’s next 10 days the most fascinating of any of his Februarys here. Riley, who watched the Heat lose Monday, 116-107, has never had an in-season decision like this doozy before him.
Does he think this high-scoring team of rehabilitation projects and developmental leaguers is a piece away from winning runner-up in the East as the trade deadline approaches Feb. 23? If so, then make a big trade of hopeful youth for proven talent.
Or does he (like me) fall in like but not head-over-heels in love with this hot team? If so, then ride this out to wherever it goes but don’t sell off tomorrow. What’s it going to be, Pat? When the season was 11-30, it was no decision at all. Play the kids. Ride out the season. Pick up your lottery pick and spend your free-agent money and start all over again with a better chance next year.
But after they won 13 straight in a man-
Riley ... has never had an in-season decision like this doozy before him.
ner that made the basketball world sit up and notice? Now Dion Waiters or Johnson might be their lottery pick.
“They’re shooting the lights out during their run,’’ Orlando coach Frank Vogel said. “I think they have six guys over the last 14 games shooting 40 percent from the 3-point line.
“If you do that, you’re going to win a lot of basketball games. You’re going to have a lot of space to attack the paint.”
Vogel’s stat is correct, if you count the sixth player, Willie Reed, making his only 3-point shot to be the sixth player. But there’s reason to pause about the other five players shooting more than 40 percent — Goran Dragic, Waiters, Okaro White, Wayne Ellington and Luke Babbitt.
None of them have shot over 40 percent for their careers. Take Dragic. He was shooting 53.6 percent on 3-pointers over this 14-game run. He’s a career 36.4 percent shooting from distance. So has he’s found magic in the past month?
This is a wonderful run. Erik Spoelstra is a great coach (One aside: It’s almost an insult that Spoelstra is being praised for this run as if it’s something different than what he’s brought his coaching career. It’s most easily understandable. But it’s no different).
Is it fact this team is full of overnight sharpshooters? Or is it fantasy to think everyone has changed their stripes? That’s not to say Waiters, at 25, might not be worth investing in if this keeps up through April.
Waiters would be. Johnson, too, if the price is right for a player who turns 30 next week. But that’s not the calendar issue staring at Riley. It’s whether he pulls the trigger on a trade by Feb. 23 for now, here, today.
You have to admit his career leans to such moves. But there’s no Shaquille O’Neal out there right now. No Alonzo Mourning. Ibaka? He’s a nice player, not a whale, as Riley likes to say.
We can throw out other trades: Tyler Johnson and Josh Richardson for Denver’s Danilo Gallinari? Or (gulp) Hassan Whiteside for DeMarcus Cousins?
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra advises his players to cover their ears at times like this, “because you’ll just get caught in the crazy rabbit holes and you don’t need to exhaust yourself from all of that,’’ he said.
“All they are is distractions. None of us can control it. We have something very good going on right now, and that’s the focus right now, see if we can continue if we can continue to play rock-solid basketball. The veteran guys understand that.” That’s what coaches say. Riley, as the team president, has decisions as the deadline looms. Ultimately he has to decide in the next 10 days what this team is. Can it contend with the right piece? Then make a trade?