Quick thoughts on acceptance:
Four-thousand, eight-hundred and ninety-six minutes of basketball later (not counting pre-season), the Heat find themselves at the cusp of the adversity they’ve faced all season.
"I hate Dallas, but I really hope Miami loses."
"[Miami] had it coming to them. They deserve to lose."
"Can’t wait until their whole season comes crashing down on the super friends."
"Jordan wouldn’t [x thing that LeBron James did wrong]"
All actual things heard in the last few days leading to the same pattern of notion that the general public outside of South Florida Miami believes (recent national poll tallied over 80% votes in favor of Dallas). Miami should lose.
Should. As in they must lose. They ought to lose.
Why? Most people can’t actually clearly voice why. They see Miami as the bad guys and Dallas as the team that isn’t Miami, good by default. A charity-raising televised decision and an overzealous welcome celebration started it all and it’s snowballed downhill since. The public is obsessed with witnessing the failure of others in the public eye, and this is no different.
One thing has surfaced over the playoffs that might be aiding the critique is what continues to be referred to as “hero ball”. Let’s come to peace with it. They aren’t wrong.
As we’ve shown earlier, it’s not that Miami has more of it, but more of it is magnified now as the heroes of their previous teams now take random turns in the clutch for Miami. It worked often enough through the current playoff run to overcome every team before this in 5 games, but now has failed to make an appearance in the direst of times, putting Miami one defeat away from being buried under the public’s scrutiny.
Teams live by the three and die by the three. Miami will long live to Wade and James’ beat, and will also die by it. It’s a viable gamble that they break out at least 4 times out of 7 and the hope is they have 2 more in them at home. If Miami loses in a close game, a big part of the public’s perception may be valid. The heroes failed. In an imperfect world, we shouldn’t have it any other way.
We wouldn’t have gotten this far without them. Long live our heroes.
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