Heat's fatal flaw that will doom 2025 NBA championship chances

10/19/2024 06:55 PM

As the Miami Heat prepare to take on a tougher Eastern Conference this season, there are aspects about the team that can prove once again that they can make some noise and prove the doubters wrong again. With the Heat roster taking shape with the  season opener next Wednesday, there is also a fatal flaw that could hold the team back from capturing their ultimate goal in winning championship.

While people will point out at the Heat brass for their inability in acquiring a superstar through trade or free agency, there is one aspect that arguably rivals the point. In fact, it’s the point that has held back Heat president Pat Riley and others in the front office to not aggressively look to split up their core of Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, and Tyler Herro as it’s the topic on health as he even mentioned this past Thursday.

"We don't know about this team because you can't have Tyler and you can't have Bam and you can't have Jimmy play 30 games," Riley said according to Anthony Chaing of The Miami Herald. "So it would be like me saying when I was coaching that Magic [Johnson] and Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] and James Worthy, well they only played 30 games. From that reality standpoint, we need everybody. I hope and pray that we can be healthy this year to do that."

Heat’s Erik Spoelstra makes injury guarantee despite past few seasons

The past few years have been a struggle for the Heat in terms of injuries and health, especially last season where they ranked near the top of the league in missed games and had 35 different starting lineups which is a franchise record. Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra would guarantee health would be better this season to ClutchPoints during the team’s media day.

"We’re not going to belabor that. But as you can imagine, Miami, we spent a great deal of time analyzing it, reviewing it, putting things in different buckets," Spoelstra said. "Things you can’t control, things you can’t control. We focused on all the protocols and everything we can do better from the things we can control. And we think it will be better this year and sometimes you just have to breathe that into existence too and that’s our mind mindset to go into the season."

Asked Erik Spoelstra as he mentioned last season about possible changes in result of an injury-riddled.

Says they honed in on the protocols that they can control and feels it will be better this season. Full answer: #HeatCulturepic.twitter.com/kfTNInmn3D

— Zachary Weinberger (@ZachWeinberger) September 30, 2024

Looking at the players impacted by injuries, Herro only played 42 games last season which started early where he missed the majority of November due to a Grade 2 ACL sprain plus others throughout the year. Riley would even call Herro “fragile” last season as well as calling out Butler for his player availability since he hasn’t played more than 64 games with Miami in his time with the team.

This doesn’t even include injuries to such as Duncan Robinson who dealt with a nagging back issue towards the end of the season as well as Terry Rozier who missed the last 11 games of the season with neck spasms. There is no doubt that some could view it as an anomaly, but that has yet to be proven.

Heat’s Pat Riley addresses player availability as a concern

During Riley’s end of season press conference that became viral for several quotes, he would highlight player availability has being a main reason other teams were so successful like the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Minnesota Timberwolves.

"Until you change the way you go about doing the things that are necessary to win, whatever they are, those things you’re doing to try to win, if they aren’t working, you must change," Riley said. "And so that doesn’t mean that change is a sinister word here. There’s a lot of elements to go into a culture, erosion of a culture, being together for 30 years, generational change, problems in the NBA that our league wide when it comes to health, comes to players missing games and availability."

"You take a look at all the the young sort of up and coming they haven’t tasted it yet; OKC, Minnesota, Indiana, Boston with a new group, Orlando, etc, etc. You know, for some reason these guys are playing 70-80 games. It’s a feeling more than anything else. But that’s definitely a deep dive for us this summer and to player availability but so we do have to change some things. But we surely are not going to rip anything apart here."

At any rate, this Heat team can be dangerous if they stay healthy, but besides the guarantee mentioned before by Spoelstra, they are still prone to missed games as they will look to try and prove it wrong this season. The regular season starts on Oct. 23 when the Orlando Magic come into town and face Miami in an in-state rivalry contest.

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