BennyGfromFL wrote:Fantastic post, flashpoint.
Thinking about the joy I felt on July 8th and witnessing what we are two years later; seeing the red flags from day 1 without the ability to do anything about it or stop it; watching us have to fail over and over again without the proper changes being made until it all becomes **** beyond any kind of repair -- the whole thing makes me want to cry.
Spo is to blame, as much as a doofus who's trying to "fake it til he makes it" can be blamed. Riley is definitely to blame for not seeing this thing through. I also place part of the blame on the big 3 themselves. I'm pretty sure they've known what they've had in Spo, but never tried to force a change because they still felt they could just "do it themselves" despite his deficiencies, that they didn't have to be psychologically motivated by a coach to play to their highest level, all in the name of avoiding long, tough practices.
Yes, I believe we'll win this series. Yes, I think and hope we can still win the championship. However, we can win 5 titles in a row, and so long as it's in this broken, disjointed offense predicated on the individual talents of the big 3 bailing us out, we'll never come close seeing what could've and should've been.
I totally agree with you. I don't think any of us expected this to be such a grinding, broken experience. The euphoria of everything coming together perfectly that July. To find us now on this precipice of potentially epic disappointment. If we don't win this year things become very ugly. Even doing the right thing and replacing Spo will still mean we've wasted 2 years of their primes. Wade's prime might soon be ending and that window to see something really special will be closed.
I'll be honest, I don't enjoy this team as much as I've enjoyed past Heat teams. I don't even think of this as much of a team. I have faith our heroes can drag us to a chip, but I would love to have seen this become a real team. Few things are as grating to me as poor leadership and management. Spo isn't suited for this. A lot of us saw it. But Riley's human, he has an ego and it's bitten us hard. Or maybe some of the blame can be laid on the players and they were vain enough to not want a coach who pushed them. I'd hate to think they wanted that but maybe they did and they're paying for it now.
As a fanbase, it feels like something has been stolen from us. Last year, we stood by the team through waves of bitter hypocrisy from the rest of the country. We get rewarded with a Finals loss to my most hated team on our homecourt. As great as it was to advance so far, that was a nightmare scenario. And a lot of the reasons for that loss stem from poor coaching and leadership. A lot of us got a sense from watching the team and Spo's inadequate coaching that at some point in the playoffs the HC would have to provide some added resolve (through motivation or scheme) to the players to win and he's just not capable of that. That's why it's a very small fraternity of coaches who have won it all. We survived that sickening loss just to expect this year for the team to have experience and chemistry developed. This is not a better team than last year's. There's been no progress, maybe even regression, and you lay that directly at Spo's feet.
These two years have been a strange ride. It's good to see some fellow fans I can relate to with their eyes open as we go through this. It's a necessary change from the squawking about what a super awesome job Spo is doing that dominated this thread just a week ago.
