OKC Matchup Will Be the Miami Heat's Most Telling Game of the Regular Season
To the rest of the NBA world tuning in, tomorrow's matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Miami Heat will offer just another opportunity to watch the league's superstar tandems of Durant-Westbrook and LeBron-Wade go head to head.
To the Miami Heat, however, the stakes will be much higher, as the team will have the onus of defending its home court (and perhaps its championship aspirations) against a juggernaut Thunder team that ran them off the court only a week ago in Oklahoma.
Now granted, this will only be a regular season game and, to that end, comes in a lockout-shortened season, but the gravitas of this matchup cannot be denied for a couple of reasons. Among the first is how the Heat lost its first matchup against the Thunder, which came in as similar a fashion during their most recent game against the Celtics as it did in last year's NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks.
LeBron James shrinking to near obscurity.
Dwyane Wade having to shoulder the uneven burden of carrying a team that hasn't so much lost its identity than it has become aware its team name lacks the letter "r."
Erik Spoelstra staring along the sidelines in disbelief, if not complete dejection.
These symptoms have become an all-too-familiar sight of a team that, to this point, seems ill-equipped for adversity and has given no long-term indication that they have addressed whatever last year's problems were.
The next reason is a simple reflection of where things stand in this current NBA climate, in which the Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder are popularly considered the class of their conference, and what better opportunity to test your mettle than by beating that one opponent expected to stand largest in your way of winning a championship.
Now, whether this remains accurate for Miami is arguable, considering the Heat have yet to leapfrog a Chicago Bulls team for first place in the Eastern Conference standings despite their star point guard's absence for almost half the NBA season.
But it is most certainly true for Oklahoma City, record and all.
Finally, there has to be an acknowledgement that, despite coming to a point in the season where teams are prone to suffer from lethargy and have a tendency to conserve their energy for the playoffs, this is the time to work out the kinks.
As Magic Johnson stated during the halftime show of the Heat-Celtics game, "Miami can't expect to think they are good enough to just turn their game off and on like the flip of a switch, or it will come back to haunt them."
Look, Miami made adjustments coming into this season. It wanted to run more and gear its team for fast breaks. In turn, teams have become careful not to turn the ball over against it.
Miami wanted LeBron James and Dwyane Wade to stop settling for three-pointers and attack the rim. In turn, teams have packed the paint and forced both guys, who account for a majority of the team's offense, to shoot anyway.
James wanted to keep himself loose for clutch-time moments by reverting back to his old, carefree personality. Despite that, he still displays that same shocked look in his eye in the waning moments of a close game.
Maybe this is all conjecture, and the enemy the Heat is really trying to avoid is the seed of self-doubt.
Or maybe, the Heat is still trying to turn a blind eye on something too fundamental to fix.
Either way, we will find out soon enough. Possibly sooner than we think.
