Heat will settle for nothing less than a title
MIAMI -- If there were a Ten Commandments of sports, No. 1 would be to not look past your next opponent. It's something every player is told from the youngest possible age. And it's why nearly every television sportscast is filled with serious-looking guys sitting in front of their lockers talking about "playing one game at a time."
But this commandment is somewhat of a challenge for the members of the Miami Heat as they prepare to open the playoffs Saturday against the Knicks.
The Heat tried its best Friday to talk about the challenge of beating a seventh-seeded Knicks team that Miami already has beaten three times in three chances this season. But it was clear by the tone of the players' voices and the tenor of their comments that the Heat believes this is just a first stop on its way back to the NBA Finals and a chance to play for the title Miami thought it should have won last year.
"It's going to be an entertaining series, it's going to be a physical series," Dwyane Wade said. "For us, I think it's best that we start off with an opponent that really makes you focus and understand you have to play your best to beat them."
Start off? Yes, of course. This is a team that believes this is the beginning of a run that will produce a championship that is rightfully theirs. It's a place the Heat has been waiting to go since its season ended so painfully last year in a six-game loss to the Dallas Mavericks.
It was a humiliating defeat for the Heat, which had been built to win not just a title but titles. And it's one that still hurts.
LeBron James didn't leave his house for two weeks after the loss. He didn't take phone calls from friends and didn't even watch television because, as he recently told Sports Illustrated, "because every channel -- doesn't matter if it was the Cartoon Channel -- was talking about me and the Heat."
Now he's looking to put it all behind him.
"I've been ready for this moment for a long time now," James said of the playoffs.
He certainly is playing as though he's ready; he's coming off another monster regular season. James averaged 27.1 points, 7.9 rebounds and 6.2 assists and shot 53.1 percent in 62 games.
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra talked Friday about how difficult it was for his team to deal with the disappointment of losing last year. He said the feeling was compounded by the fact that the NBA lockout made the Heat's painful offseason longer than it should have been.
"It took us some time to get over what happened last year," he said, "but the regular season was good for us. We went though some things that helped make us stronger for this moment. What we did is recommit to an unknowable future. There are a handful of teams like us that feel exactly like us right now, that feel they have a legitimate chance to contend for a title, but what can be guaranteed is our commitment."
The Heat should be committed, considering how much pressure is on the team. For the Heat to go 0-for-2 in title chances after putting together a dream team of James, Wade and Chris Bosh would make it a leaguewide punch line. But losing is not something Wade is thinking about.
"It's kind of like we played the whole season to get to this point," Wade said. "It's like in 2004-05 when we lost to Detroit and we played the whole season waiting to get back to that same game against Detroit in the Eastern Conference finals. It's a season we've been waiting on, to see if we're great enough to win a championship. It's going to be a long or short 60 days."
The longest this seven-game series could go is 16 days.
