Two All-Stars doesn't make a team. This is the hard lesson the Miami Heat is learning. Bosh went down with an injury, and guess what, the coaching staff is struggling to figure out how to fill the void. It should have been obvious to them from the get-go. A team means five starters who matter, not two starters and three players who don't matter, a bench that has no collective umph because they too know they don't matter. All offense goes through D Wade and James. They remaining trio and the bench are players of last resort. When the Heat added Battier and a healthy Miller, I felt at the time, they had added enough pieces to take them to the Eastern finals and perhaps win it, even with a healthy Chicago Bulls. But the Heat coaching screwed up big-time. The didn't create A TEAM. Miller, Battier, Haslam, and Jones have been relegated to after-thoughts. No championship for the Heat. The Indiana Pacers, A TEAM, will beat them. Then another TEAM, the Boston Celtics will beat the Pacers, but many kudos to the Pacers; they play bball they way it should be played, unselfishly.
In the West the best TEAM, the San Antonio Spurs, will play the Celtics for the NBA Championship.
One of the great TEAMS to win the NBA Championship was the New York Knicks of Willis Reed fame. I wrote this poem for one of the penultimate team players, Bill Bradley
Bill Bradley by Tom Meschery
The sameness of your jumpshot
was your secret. I know
that now. Age has taught me
how repetition wears a person down.
Newspapers wrote about your habits
shooting hundreds of shots
from exactly the same place
on the court, top of the key,
free-throw line extended until
you knew those spots by heart.
I had a coach who called it
muscle memory: what you must do
to be great. Today, that dedication
wears me out.I"d rather think
of Dick Barnett, your teammate,
who never kicked back the same
crazy jumper twice, and one time
from half court, the moment
the ball left his hand, turned
to one of those recorders of the game,
keeper of the clock and said,
"Baby, we are in oo-ver-time."
