It wasn’t until Jimmy Butler made the play he shouldn’t, the one pass he couldn’t, that you sensed the end was finally coming for the Miami Heat. You’d sensed it so many times before this spring you wanted to discard it even then Monday night.
Their end first seemed certain after that play-in loss to Atlanta way back in early April, then again in getting the draw against top-seed Milwaukee. The tortuous finish of Game 6 against Boston was surely not just the end of their season but one to hauntingly hover over South Florida sports like Banquo’s ghost for eternity.
So, even when Butler drove the lane Monday night with the Heat trailing a point, even when he stopped and threw the ball into the arms of Denver’s Kentavious Caldwell-Pope with 24.7 seconds left, the first thought was how they would manage to escape this one.
Then the thudding reality hit: They wouldn’t. Denver turned that bad pass into two free throws, then two more after an errant Butler 3-point attempt for the 94-89 final in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
This time, the Heat fell short. Denver was the class of this series. But what a time the Heat had. What a two-month run. Team president Pat Riley regrets expressing the line so many years ago of how there’s only, “Winning or misery,” and this playoff stretch of the Heat tells why.
Give us this misery every time. Give us a team like this, overcoming regular odds all along the way, even if on the final night they’re the ones walking off the court emotionally and physically spent, while confetti fell around them.
If there was no title, there was no shame and certainly no regrets. You came to appreciate anew Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, whose exhaustive, obsessive work at the smallest details transferred into competitive excellence to his team. That’s just it. They weren’t a greatly talented team, as was said every series. But did any team compete harder?
Nothing defined who they were better than a 15-second sequence with just over five minutes left Monday that began with Gabe Vincent missing a 3-point shot. Max Strus dove for the long rebound, but Denver’s Caldwell-Pope grabbed it. The ball was knocked loose a few seconds later, and Bam Adebayo dove to the floor after it. Then Kyle Lowry did. Caldwell-Pope got it again.
He dribbled a few harried times before his was intercepted by Vincent. How many teams get the kind of effort, possession after possession? And on defense?
This was a Team of Spoelstras, of undrafted players who worked their way up from the bottom, just like their coach did from the video room. Caleb Martin? Duncan Robinson? Gabe Vincent? Max Strus? Was there a better lesson for what hard work and playing together can do?
Butler was the center of it all, even if he wasn’t the centerpiece enough most nights since turning an ankle in the New York Knicks series. Maybe that bothered him. Maybe it was something else. Maybe we’ll never know.
All you know is the Heat didn’t get the title they chased like a rabid dog. Sure, that matters. It’s professional sports. But what also matters is they were great protagonists in a classic, at times confounding, run through the NBA spring.
Series after series had great drama and greater performances flash by us. Against Milwaukee, Butler scored 52 and 45 points in games while being covered by Jrue Holiday, who was named the league’s top defender last week by a players’ poll from The Athletic.
The New York Knicks series was capped by Spoelstra giving a post-series salute to his boss, Pat Riley, who was tormented by those Knicks of the ’90s
“This close out game was a nod to our president,’’ Spoelstra said minutes after finishing off the Knicks in five games.
The next act against Boston was a Shakespearian drama unto itself. There was the rising action of the Heat taking a 3-0 lead and the falling action of dropping the next three, including a gut-wrenching Game 6 that could have gone down in the annals as one of South Florida sports’ worst losses.
It instead became a calling card of just who the Heat is. That dramatic Game 7 was an opus of organizational work.
So the Heat was back to the final series for the second time in four years. They didn’t win again. And, again, that matters. But the dream didn’t die as much as their run just came to an end.
“There’s no regrets on our end,’’ Spoelstra said. “There’s just sometimes you get beat.”
That’s the essence of sports. Or it least it should be. Often its hard to find amid the bells and whistles around the games. Sometimes a playoff run like this reminds you what it’s all about without winning it all.
