Please Never Talk About Miami Heat Culture Ever Again

Throughout the entire postseason bubble last year we were all waterboarded with propaganda about the great Miami Heat Culture©️.

Stories upon stories about how Team President, Pat Riley, gave Jimmy Butler his first suit or how he found Bam Adebayo in the inner city and showed him that he can turn his life around if he learned how to shoot a midrange jumper. Or how Pat Riley found 4 teenage mutant turtles in the sewers of Hell’s Kitchen and trained them to become master ninjas.

The Miami Heat only wanted players who were tough. Who worked hard. Who all popped cans of spinach in their mouth before games like Popeye.

Just a lot of corny and coded ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ dialogue surrounding a team that went to the Finals during a postseason where no one was allowed to leave their Disney World hotel rooms.

Fast forward a season and this supposed Heat Culture seems nonexistent.

Miami barely secured the 6th seed in an Eastern Conference where teams were just handing out W’s to each other left and right. You’d think the reigning East Champs would have at least clinched homecourt, ya know, considering their culture and all.

But nope, they were tasked with battling the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round. A matchup that so many ‘experts’ put on upset watch. Miami embarrassed Milwaukee in the playoffs last season so naturally, they’d stomp on them again.

Lol jk, the Miami Heat are down 0-3 to the Bucks. They are one game away from being swept the fuck out of here and they lost these games by a combined 65 points. Outside of a Game 1 overtime thriller that ended with Khris Middleton hitting a game-winner at the buzzer, Miami has been getting BLOWN OUT.

What happened to all that grit and toughness?

What happened to this Miami Heat Culture?

You can make the argument they were at a disadvantage with the season starting earlier. Teams that missed the bubble like the Knicks and the Grizzlies, had longer offseasons and were able to get healthier and improve.

Covid-19 also hammered this team. The first half of this season for the Heat was one of the most difficult in the league.

All understandable.

Except your entire franchise is built around ‘no excuses’ and all that cliche bullshit so how can I cut the Heat some slack when they beat me over the head with how much effort they put in?

It’s almost as if the genius Pat Riley made one crucial error: he forgot to get talented players.

There was a rumor that the Heat wouldn’t trade for James Harden because they didn’t want to include Tyler Herro in the deal.

Now, this is just a rumor and there’s no way to confirm this but it is unbelievably funny to turn down an MVP candidate who is still very much in the prime of his career for Jack Harlow’s buddy who just scored 9 points and was a -17 in Game 3.

Rather than going for the gold medal of James Harden, they settled for the bronze of Victor Oladipo because he ‘fit the culture’ or whatever but they ignored the glaring hole in his game: his bones keep breaking and his joints are made of paper towels.

Oladipo hasn’t played more than 36 games in a season since 2017. It’s 2021 by the way.

They also replaced Jae Crowder with Trevor Ariza which seems minor but Ariza is 2-for-11 from 3 this series including a wonderful 18 minutes with zero points in Game 3. Masterful front office work by Pat Riley.

Heat Culture is dead. It never existed. Thank god.

Random Stray Thoughts:

It’s remarkable how Pat Riley has tricked everyone into treating him like some important Italian mafioso when in reality he’s an Irish dude with zero mob ties.

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