Hawks turn off the Heat

Everyone who knows me is aware of my loyalty to the Miami area sports teams, including the Miami Heat. Sadly the heat were eliminated yesterday (05/03/2009) in the first round of the playoffs by the Atlanta Hawks. But, who could decipher that series? A seven game series in which no game was closer than a 10 points differential (26, 15, 29, 10, 15, 26, 13).

Atlanta was the best team, but in my opinion not the strongest. Miami was seen as a one man team, D. Wade, and it is partly true. When Wade is in the game the attitude of the team changes completely, but I believe that this series gave them some definition and a foundation to work on for next year. In the first three games we saw the resurgence of J. O’Neal, sadly he got injured. The support of James Jones, Michael Beasley and at times Cook and Chalmers were also helpful.  They need work in consistency and leadership when Wade is not in the court.

Overall this is a fairly young team in which most contributors are rookies (Chalmers and Beasley), 1 year (Anthony and Cook) or 5 years (Jones, Haslem and Wade) with the exception of 12 years veteran O’Neal, is in a good position for growth and improvement. Let’s not forget their record improvement of 15-67 a year ago to 43-39 this year. Also, realistically speaking what would they have been able to do against Cleveland in the second round?