Super-Human Resources
The Miami (ahem) Heatles
I’m doing an awful lot of pontification for a guy who’s really only watched a couple of game 1s; so I’ll be quick and I’ll be back at it Friday-ish, when the storms have settled and the pictures are clearer.
Players react to crowd trouble in myriad ways, in the modern NBA. LeBron James is known to reach deep into his bag and scar entire cities. Pat Beverly struts into opposing arenas and stirs up the antipathy himself, with a tried and tested recipe whose resulting gumbo is an acquired taste. Trae Young, the Association’s most effortless villain, shakes and shimmies and calls for more abuse — a ceremony Knicks Nation knows only too well.
In the case of Kyrie Irving, there is an inevitable, late-game excellence that is eventually overshadowed by direct, usually verbal retaliation towards hecklers and their F-bombs. I have personally grown weary of this soap opera, and wish there was a way to keep Kyrie doing the thing he does so guilefully in the clutch: raining dripping wet buckets.
Yesterday’s clash between the Nets and the Celtics, at the Other Garden, spoke such volumes about how important it is for basketball organisations to establish a culture around their superstars — and so did the Heat V Hawks game before it. Whilst Miami put the absolute beatdown on Atlanta, the commentary team kept alluding to how cultures like the Heat’s, the Clippers’, and even Memphis’ put those organizations in good stead to perpetuate success. Granted, the Heat have merely offered a homecoming of sorts to Jimmy Butler’s intellectual fits and starts, and the Clippers have had to develop so many role players for having Kawhi Leonard and Paul George out for such long periods. Who knows how long Memphis will be a problem for, and how many of those tenacious kids they can actually pay. But the point is not so much what a franchise looks like in the absence of its superstars, versus when they’re around.
When the Heat attack defences, the threat comes from absolutely anywhere. Duncan Robinson, all 6’7” of him, just needs to find the hot hand early. Jimmy Butler will do the dirty work in the paint. Kyle Lowry will hoist the rock up himself, and Tyler Herro — off the bench! — never looks like someone that needs to adapt to the temperature of the game when he checks in. Max Strus, who was merely a nice piece in November, starts on the wing now for a laughable salary given his production. Even when people are subbing in, or just filling gaps filled by injury, you get the sense — in Miami and in Golden State especially — that these are opportunities to learn the true value of each and every roster spot. It’s almost as if free agency and/or the trade market are considered the last possible resort, if there are means with which to assess whether a bargain or a pivot already exists in-house.
This is all front office phenomena, but you can see it translate onto the court. It’s every bit ball movement as it is giving minutes to guys who don’t have outstanding media profiles just yet. For contrast, you don’t get the sense Brooklyn is everyday crafting a contingency for Kevin Durant’s minutes or Kyrie Irving’s, or even (now) Ben Simmons’. Whoever the replacement is merely ‘holds the fort’ while the franchise waits for Kevin’s ankle to heal, or New York to reconsider its vaccine mandate, or Ben to maybe get over himself. This approach to winning confronted the Heat last night, in the form of a Hawks lineup that doesn’t have much of a hook if Trae Young’s trickery is suppressed.
It will win you basketball games to somehow congregate the deadliest shooters alive, as Brooklyn did before trading for Ben Simmons. It could even win you a chip, as it did the 2020 Los Angeles Lakers. But it costs you a lifetime of competitiveness, if your franchise doesn’t use its time with a generational talent to imbue good roster and organisational habits. When the next Durant is drafted by Sacramento, and the next Kyrie by Orlando, what’s the intangible asset you’re going to lean on to stay relevant in a playoff series — say, five years from now?
Yesterday Kyrie ran the clock down with a dribble motion, and the Celtics knew he only had one other option if they closed him out — so they closed Durant out too. On the opposing play, with 11 seconds on the clock, Brooklyn were forced to account for the possibility that Marcus Smart, a third option, might chuck up a field goal. The ball moved so many different times, so many different ways, it must have made them dizzy.
Still, there may be six games to go. My money, and I must admit my heart, is with the teams that look spoilt for choice in the clutch.
