MIAMI (AP) — A frustrated Bam Adebayo tore his jersey as he left the field after the final buzzer. Erik Spoelstra made no effort to hide his sadness about the end of the Miami Heat season. Kyle Lowry said the year was wasted.
The hope was to spend Tuesday flying to the NBA Finals.
Instead, the Heat is entering a low season of decisions.
A team that was put together for the sole purpose of winning a championship will be complaining in the coming months about an opportunity that slipped away. Miami’s season ended with a game 7 home loss to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals, denying the Heat a second trip to the NBA Finals in the past three seasons.
“You don’t know how many chances you’ll have to come back to this, so for me it was honestly a waste of a year,” Lowry said after his first season with the Heat ended. “I only play to win championships. It was fun and I appreciate the guys, my teammates and I appreciate the opportunity. But for me it’s a waste of a year. You don’t win a championship, it’s a wasted year.”
The Heat had the best record in the East during the regular season, 53-29. They did without a player voted into the All-NBA teams — Miami was only sixth No. 1 in the past four decades without a first, second, or third team roster.
“You’ve been fighting so hard all season, with ups and downs, injuries, disrespect and you still find a way to get so close,” said Adebayo, the Miami center who was in the running for defensive player of the United States. year. “It’s rough.”
The NBA award votes were cast when the regular season ended. If the playoffs had counted, Jimmy Butler would have been named All-World. He joined LeBron James as the only two players in Heat history to have a year with at least eight 30-point playoff games during the first three rounds, capping his playoff run with a season saving of 47 points. in Game 6 in Boston and then 35 more in the Finals.
“We’ve had enough,” Butler said. “Next year we will have enough and we will be back in the same situation, and we are going to get it done.”
If they had won the Heat Game 7 against Boston, no one knows who even would have had them available to beat Golden State in the NBA Finals. Tyler Herro, who was named sixth man of the year, suffered a groin injury. Power forward PJ Tucker was unable to finish Game 7 after lugging leg problems for much of the postseason. Lowry’s hamstring has been out of order for over a month. Butler was clearly ill, although he insisted he was fine.
“It feels heartbreaking,” said Spoelstra, who concluded his 14th season as Heat coach. “We just wanted to make it a blast. A crack in Golden State, and just discover it, you know, as competitors. I like this group. This team was here to compete for a title. In that regard, I think we have met those expectations. But we came up short. We’ll never know, and that’s the part we’ll have to live with.”
HERRO EXPANSION
Herro didn’t have great numbers after the season, at least in part because of the groin problem, but had a year that probably exceeded expectations overall. He didn’t mind not to start and understood that the role of the sixth man has always been an essential part of Spoelstra’s game plans. He is eligible for a contract extension that now goes into Year 4, and a clear priority for the Heat this summer is figuring out how much they can pay Herro from the 2023-24 season, when the new deal takes effect.
TUCKER’S FUTURE
Tucker is 37, undersized to be a power-forward with a height of 6 feet and has never averaged 10 points in an NBA season. That is often not a good combination. But – assuming Tucker opts out of the second year of his Heat deal, which makes sense – it would be shocking if Miami didn’t fight to keep him, given the massive impact he made on the Heat in his first year. at the club. Spoelstra loves what he brings, just like the rest of the dressing room.
THE ROBINSON DILEMMA
Duncan Robinson — a three-point specialist who has blossomed many times during his Miami tenure — landed a contract worth about $18 million a season last summer, sometimes lost his stroke this year, then lost his starting spot and eventually his rotation spot. He scored 27 points in the Heat’s postseason opener in April, then scored 46 points in the 17 games Miami played during the remainder of the playoffs (not even making five of them). It won’t be a surprise if he’s a trading ship as the Heat, as they often do, test the market looking for major upgrades.
UNMADE FINDINGS
Including playoffs, the Heat took 4,171 points this season from unregistered players — the most of any NBA team in the past 50 years. Max Strus and Gabe Vincent were both key parts of the rotation and will remain with the Heat on team-friendly deals for next season.
DESIGN ASSETS
Miami has the No. 27 pick in this year’s draft. The Heat forfeited their second-round pick as part of the fine imposed by the NBA after an investigation revealed the team began chasing Lowry last summer before league rules allowed it.
†
More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
