Miami will prosper and the optimism in South Florida shouldn't suffer. The Heat nearly made a stunning comeback, and LeBron James hasn't lost his ability to score in the bunches.
But if I were Erik Spolestra, not only would I be looking over my shoulders even after close victories, I'd be busting out my chalkboard and crunching complex mathematical formulas to figure out how LeBron and Dwyane Wade will complement each other.
James looked most dominant when Wade wasn't on the court, and that's troubling. Not "holy shit, this was a mistake" troubling, but "I have a hangnail, this will bother me for a few days" troubling.
The two have to figure out how to co-exist. It's not an ego thing -- they want to dominate together. It's just they've never had a teammate possessing equal ability with the ball in their hand. No two guys with these skill sets have ever played together, and it's a process -- a process that wasn't helped by Wade's preseason hammy pull. Add Chris Bosh to the discussion, who clearly doesn't have a defined role in the offense yet.
The Heat's interior defense also needs drastic improvement, and it should come with time. But for all those who were predicting 70 wins, it's just not realistic with such a revamped and experimental lineup. Next year, perhaps.
Final verdict? Inconclusive. We don't know much more about this team than we did three months ago, but the Heat have 81 more opportunities to figure it out before the games really count.
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