The morning of June 9must have felt pretty, pretty good for Miami Heat fans, a crew that is noted for its doggedness in its support for the Heat no matter how slim the chances for winning look. The Heat had not only managed to overcome a frustrating Game 1 of the 2014 NBA Finals, competing without a cramping LeBron James down the stretch as San Antonio’s AT&T’s air conditioning unit broke down, but the two-time defending champs had stolen home court advantage from the Spurs with a Game 2 win.
Miami seemed ready for their third consecutive championship, and for good reason. They had made the Eastern Conference look foolish by comparison in the weeks prior, the team had been careful in resting Dwyane Wade and to a lesser extent James all season, it boasted the home court advantage in the potential best-of five Finals, and top-heavy teams tend to do better in Finals series’ in comparison to deeper squads like San Antonio. Even some of the smarter Spurs fans I follow on Twitter were predicting doom and gloom as Sunday night’s Game 2 loss turned into Monday morning’s realization that the end could be near, at the hands of the Miami Heat for the second straight season.
We know how things turned out. The Spurs took three consecutive games and the championship, in borderline one-sided fashion. Suddenly, the absolute certainty behind LeBron James’ free agent return to Miami – where he could make more money, raise his kids in a state they’re more recently familiar with, playing for and with known commodities – seemed in peril.
Heat fans, what’s left of them, probably don’t know how close they were to getting him back. Just three more wins. From a recent interview with CNN’s Rachel Nichols:
The transcript:
"It's a greater chance, for sure. It’s gonna be hard to leave back-to-back-to-back championships and try to go for four. But obviously you really can't live and think of what may have happened. I've always been a person kind of live in the moment."
In this moment, it seems pretty ridiculous, if we’re honest. That’s how far the Cavaliers franchise has come in the months since they fired former general manager Chris Grant, who presided over a disastrous post-LeBron James run for nearly four years.
Since his departure, the team lucked into winning the NBA’s draft lottery for the third time in four years, it declined to sign Luol Deng, it made a series of cap-clearing moves pushing enough salary out of the way for James to consider coming back to Cleveland, and it locked up Kevin Love with a trade and (we’re guessing, but come on …) eventual contract extension. Kyrie Irving was also signed to a maximum deal, and new GM David Griffin also managed to secure a massive spate of unguaranteed contracts for potential dealings during the 2015 offseason and beyond. The Cavaliers may not win it all this year, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they did, and they do look like the NBA’s Next Great Thing.
The Heat? Still suffering from a series of pound-foolish moves made during James’ run with the team, they just committed to paying Dwyane Wade over $31 million during the next two seasons, Deng two-thirds of that over the same time frame, and Chris Bosh $118 million until he’s 35. They’ll be good, not great, and potentially in a lot of trouble if injuries hit – Bosh is set to attempt to resume low post play with his wispy frame, Dwyane Wade has looked a shell of himself toward the end of the last two postseasons, and Deng’s odometer has far, far more ticks than the typical 29-year old.
It looks like an obvious choice now, but despite James’ proclamations of wanting to live in the moment, he’s also still stung by the summer of 2010. Less the stupid letter Cavs owner Dan Gilbert pounded out in the wake of his departure, but more because of the criticism he took in for leaving a better, incumbent team for a different squad in Miami – even though anyone with one lick of NBA knowledge knew that this was the right move for LBJ.
A chance to win four consecutive championships in the city that you and your family have come to have adopted while making more money along the way is a big deal. Dwyane Wade and the Heat knew it was all over when they didn’t walk away from their final meeting with LeBron with a verbal commitment in hand, but things may have been far different had they come to that meeting with the knowledge that everyone was getting rings, all over again, come October.
It seems like a ridiculous revision, with October just a few days away, but it isn’t a ridiculous notion.
Best of all, it speaks to just how far David Griffin and these Cleveland Cavaliers have come since last spring. This is about as remarkable as NBA turnarounds get.
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