41 and Counting

Last night, the Miami Heat lost a close game to the Denver Nuggets. One might wonder why that is fodder for a post on this blog. It is significant because it was the Heat's 41st loss. In an 82 game season, the Heat have guaranteed that they won't finish with a winning record before the All-Star Break.

I saw this coming a while back and had been looking forward to making fun of this accomplishment. But now that it has actually happened, I feel kind of ambivalent about it. It's not as much fun to make fun of the Heat now that Shaquille O'Neal has been traded to Phoenix.

I'm not a Shaq fan. I am a Lakers fan and a Kobe Bryant fan. When Shaq got traded to the Lakers four years ago, I thought Kobe was treated unfairly in the media as everyone thought he should bear the sole blame for the breakup of the dynasty. I was convinced then, and am even more so now, that Shaq was every bit as selfish and self-conscious as Kobe is/was. He just did a better job of hiding it.

Shaq is not a true team player. He has consistently shown up out of shape and does not do the offseason work necessary to try and prevent the "injuries" he has suffered every year going back to his days in L.A. His flat out refusal to work on his free throw shooting should be an embarrassment to the NBA. He had an attitude that he could just turn it on for the playoffs and everything would be OK. Well, that did not work so well last year when the Heat were swept out of the playoffs in the first round after Shaq had started out the season out of shape and missed some games due to injury. And then he shows up out of shape again this season. Shaq may be a pro athlete, but he is not a professional.

Then, two years ago, Shaq and the Heat won a championship thanks to some pretty awful officiating and Dwayne Wade playing out of his mind. Seeing Shaq win another championship really annoyed me.

So I enjoyed seeing the Heat get knocked out of the playoffs uncerimoniously last year and have been ecstatic as the losses piled up this year. The Heat ar 9-41. That number is just astounding. It is the worst record in the NBA by a game. I have cheered every loss and jeered Shaq in the process. As this season has progressed, discontentment with Shaq was increasing and there were rumors that Shaq and Heat management were not on good terms. That fact more than any other validates what I think was the reality with the Lakers situation. So I had been planning to gleefully point out this little fact about the Heat's season for a while now. And the Heat went and ruined it.

Now that Shaq is gone, it's not fun anymore...it's just kind of sad. Aside from D-Wade, this team hardly resembles an NBA team. But they have signs of life. They played the Lakers well in the first game with the new teammates. And then last night they took another strong Western Coferenced team to overtime and had a chance to win it at the buzzer, but it was not to be. They look good right now and maybe they will make a turnaround.

But this season is a loss and will be a really bad memory for fans of the franchise. As for me, it's just not as satisfying that Shaq was able to escape.