Miami Heat's Championship Hopes Die with a Serious Dwyane Wade Injury

Right now the Miami Heat are head and shoulders above every team in the NBA and should be considered heavy favorites to win the NBA championship.

Those odds could drop considerably with a serious injury to Dwyane Wade, which leaves the point guard's current foot injury as a major concern for Miami fans.

For this purpose, let's speculate that Wade's injury is serious and would require him missing a lot of time, including the playoffs.

What's that do for the Heat's chances?

It drops them considerably.

They would still be contenders for sure. Anytime you have a LeBron James to lean on, then a championship is at least a possibility.

But as we've seen before, the playoffs are a whole different animal to deal with and for Miami, having a healthy Wade is a must.

What makes the Heat so hard to deal with is having their Big Three on the floor. They are a nightmare for opposing teams to match up against. Having Wade healthy also makes Miami a better defensive team and in the summer months, sometimes that's more important than anything that happens on the offensive end.

There's also the fact that Wade excels at getting to the free-throw stripe. That's also big come playoff time.

There's so many little things that Wade brings to the Heat that are important parts of winning playoff series'.

Finally there is the LeBron factor.

Without beating a dead horse here, does anyone really want to put the pressure of having to carry the Heat to a title on the shoulders of James?

His track record suggests that it's a bad idea.

If Wade were out and James won a ring, well every critic in the world would be silenced and I couldn't think of a better thing for LeBron.

But if he attempted again and failed, it would be more fuel for the fire for all of his critics.

People would begin to pile on and no one's shoulders are big enough to carry all of that around.

Not even LeBron's.

So while the Heat would certainly be in the mix to win a title without Wade, they definitely wouldn't be the clear-cut favorites, and I'm certain that Miami fans don't want the Heat to go for it this summer without him.