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And now, today's kind of gutless episode. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Five on the Floor, Daily Insider Show on the Miami Heat and the NBA featuring Ethan Skolnick, Greg Solvander, and Alex Toledo, plus others from the Five Reason Sports Network. Welcome back to Five on the Floor, here's today's floor plan. I'm Ethan Skolnick. You found me Ethan J. Skolnick at Five Reason Sports. I got Greg Solvander. You can find him at Greg Solvander, whoever it was who paid my tab at the Chinese restaurant I was at tonight because he's a fan of Five on the Floor, and then he slipped out the door. I just want to say thank you, and I owe you. So next time at Christina Wands, it's on me. That doesn't happen to me before. I will say that. It's kind of because of Brady, right? It has to be. It can't be either of us or Alex or something like that. At the end of the day, it's not any of the three of us. It's got to be Brady, but I just, again, wanted to say thank you for that. Appreciate it. [INAUDIBLE] Excellent. All right. Let's get to it. You know what was not excellent, Greg? The heat yesterday, and I went into this on playback with people. We went through the game, and until about two and a half minutes left, when the heat were like, oh, wait. We might lose to the worst team in basketball at home, a team that just lost 16 straight before they beat Charlotte, a team with 10 wins on the season, and they actually started to care in the last third, 2.30, and made some plays, and then we watched the last possession and the last possession. If you replay it, if you replay it, the first thing, Terry had an opportunity. Rosier has the ball, right? So just want to reset this. They're down two, OK? 1, 10, 1, 0, 8. Rosier has the ball, and it looked like he could have gotten in the paint. It looked like he could have gotten in the paint, but he doesn't-- he's not looking to do that. That's not how the play was designed, I guess, because essentially, he waited for Duncan, and then he kind of slipped, and he threw this low bounce pass to Duncan, which was taking Duncan away from the basket, which we asked was creating some space, but it's why Duncan is off balance when he takes that three. He never got totally set, and then again, the next play, I repeatedly, before we get into the topic today's episode, I repeatedly, Greg, have criticized Jimmy's shot selection in some of these situations. I have no problem with that one. He didn't get the ball till 1.8 seconds left, and he can't know that, except to know that the clock is running out, because, again, Duncan took a shot with eight seconds, so he made the best play possible, which was to take the three, and people were complaining, "I don't know why we don't go for a two in that situation, maybe that's more relevant to Duncan," and Spolshar, that is to Jimmy. Jimmy, at that point, had no choice. You take the best shot you can. It's not like the shot he took against Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals, where he missed it, and people were like, "Okay, he could have driven into the basket in transition. I don't know that he had time, and there was no lane." So we'll get into the overall effort, but I mean, Greg, your thoughts with 24 hours to think about it? It's probably the worst loss of the season, if we're going to just boil it down, because when you think about the fact that now they're in the home stretch, and Washington had lost what they had lost, they just obviously broke that streak against Charlotte. You can't let them come into your house and beat you. The Heat had been a suspect team at home all year. We're going to talk about them against good teams and what that's meant, but this was a bad team that came in and beat them, and they looked like they didn't take them seriously until it was too late, and that is unfortunate. And I think that if it were any other group, it'd be tough to swallow that when we're talking about being within 20 games of the playoffs, right? And so it's just an interesting balance with this group of having the making compassionate concession after compassionate concession throughout the season saying, "Oh, no, they're going to be able to figure this out. They're going to be able to figure this out, because we've seen them figure it out yet." Losses like the one to Washington kind of prove otherwise. And so it starts to become an issue of how much can we even measure the regular season, and that is a tough place to be for fans. I think just emotionally, it's tough to know how much do you place weight on what takes place night overnight in all these regular season ball games? Well, Greg, we're running out of things to blame it on. That's where we're at. Well, they weren't healthy, right? And they didn't have a point guard. We've gone through this. Or for some fans, I hate to say it. Tyler's playing. They got to fit Tyler in. Like you can't blame him for what's happened in the last three games, right? Like you can't blame him. And at the same time, you can't really blame injuries in the fact that the heat don't have enough players now. I mean, there have been times where they had injuries, but the roster is deeper now than it was. They've added Rosie, they've added Delaun Wright, they've added Patty Mills. Yes, they've lost Richardson, and Hero was out, and actually the love absence has killed them. And I think that's an indictment of the plan a little bit. And I think we need to do an episode just on that. Like you can't keep going into seasons without proven fortification of the front court behind BAM. Forget the next BAM, although that's relevant also. It behind BAM. I mean, they're relying on a guy who's like in the second half of his 30s, and he's given them more than they ever could have imagined. Or to be honest, we could have imagined, and imagine if he wasn't there. Oh my god. I mean, what would they be dealing with? I mean, love's been a huge pickup for them and credit to them and to him and everything else related to that. But I mean, you can't collapse when you're a guy who's 10 years, not 10, but seven, eight years past his prime, misses time, which a guy at that age is going to do. I mean, whether at, you know, in this modern NBA, whether for maintenance or severe injury, and he told me that he thought he broke his foot when he first did it. Could you imagine? Like, season would be over. Yeah. I mean, I mean, they can't play without Kevin Love. These lines without BAM have been horrible. And the BAM lineup, unfortunately, has not been good because BAM has not been good of late. I was going to calculate this. But at this point, I think Kayla Martin is shooting at a higher percentage from three since the All-Star game, and BAM is from the line. Wow. I'm going to look this up and throw this stat on there. We will put on a discord later, but I mean, that tells you where things are. I mean, basically, since the All-Star break, Kayla has elevated his game significantly and Jimmy has at times, right? But nobody else really, right? As elevated. Terry's had his moments, but very like Duncan has kind of fallen back to the pack. BAM has not been good. I think I wonder if BAM's nursing that hip. I just wonder, and you're right, nobody else- Hey, Juba, why is that affecting him? I'm worthy on that, Greg, that it does appear that something's bothering, whether it's the hip or, you know, we had the collision about a week ago, but that shouldn't be affecting him at the line. You're right. Really? No, no, there's- I mean, that's the most controlled environment. Yeah. He's in it. I think it may be both. Yeah. But there's clearly something psychological. And sometimes, when you're not physically right, it leads to you being mentally not right because you can't do things easily that typically you can and that becomes frustrating and then it compounds on itself, but he's got to be better. We've talked about that at length, but we're going to get into the macro here in what's going to be a short pod, but we did want to do one today. This was a tweet from Pete versus haters, the Heat Against the Top 7 NBA teams today. So as we're pivoting from the worst team in the league to one of the best still and a team that is defending champion that seems to have found its rotation and bench, which to me was a big question this year after they lost Jeff Green and Bruce Brown, they've got some young players who have moved into their own. Denver has become very good, Calvin Booth, at finding NBA-ready players, similar to what the Heat have done here with Hawkins. Heat Against the Top 7 NBA teams, 0 and 3 versus Boston, 0 and 2 versus OKC, 0 of 2 versus Minnesota, 0 of 1 versus Denver, 0 of 2 versus the Clippers. So I'm going to get into two more teams here, but just those, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, those five teams, they're 0 for 10, okay? They're 1 and 1 against Cleveland. They had the blowout win, which was kind of a surprise and they're 1 and 2 again a year now. Well, I mean, you look at this list, there aren't a lot of them. And then 1 and 2 versus Milwaukee, okay? And they had another one that they had a chance to win that would play without Jimmy, and against without Jimmy against Boston. So there are circumstances to all these, but there are also circumstances on the other side. For instance, Philadelphia is not on this list, but the Heat beat Philly without Embiid. So there's, you know, in all of these, there's, you know, there's a little bit of nuance. But I just say, it's not good, okay? And if you add that to being a 16th in the league in record, 16th in the league in that rating, they basically is 0.8, I mean, they're, they're essentially an average team. Yeah. According to these metrics, an average team that's over 500 because their coach is Eric Spolster. That's essentially where you see coaching play and where he's getting more out of a team than maybe the macro suggests he should. I mean, I, I tweeted this today, like, if they didn't do what they did last year from the play in, from the play into then the play in eight spot to three minutes from being eliminated by a bad Bulls team and then beating Boston and Milwaukee and New York to get the finals, if they didn't do that last year, we will would have quit on this season, I think, right? Like, I mean, you kind of did a couple of weeks ago, I did, like the life, I did. Isn't that where I mean, essentially, this is just, we haven't seen the consistency. We need to see now, they don't blow up bad teams and they lose to good teams. Like they've beaten a bunch of the middle of the pack teams, like sort of the lower middle teams, the Atlanta's of the world, like they've been pretty good against those kind of teams, but the, like I said, no blood. So I guess Greg, I guess this question, do they need a win, a big win against a good team? Like, is this a must wins? I mean, they're in the standings trying to get out of the plane. We talk about seating, but just for the feeling of the team to know that they're at that level or is this like 2006 where they didn't beat a good team the entire year and then they won the championship? I think it's more likely to be like, oh, six, then them already, I don't feel great going into the Denver game at all. This is, this was down and I, you're right, I left the team for dead and then they ended up, you know, winning seven of 10 or something like that and, and kind of turning things around rather quickly, which shows you the parody of the league and how quickly you can turn things around. They didn't have Jimmy Butler, who we know can do Jimmy Butler things and Eric Spolstra. And then obviously have relative health. I think you're right. We all would have written this team off and I did write them off at one point and only because Jimmy is upright and Spo is upright and it looks as if they should have a, you know, reasonable version of the team available to them as we head down the home stretch. I give them a shot, but you're right. If, if things didn't go the way they did last year, had things gone bad against Atlanta or Chicago or something like that late in the season and then all of a sudden you lose a playing game or you're not in the same seed of the playing and things were to be shaken up, I don't know that any of us would be giving them a shot, but we have to give them a shot because Jimmy and because Spo, it's one of the more rare teams to cover and to root for because usually by now you know if you have a chance or not. And this is one of the rare moments where you actually have a team that you still don't 100% feel comfortable with what you have. It's something this roster has been in last year's. I still think it's better. And so that's kind of what I'm holding onto is the roster is better. There's more options, more versatility, there's more quickness at the point guard position than they had before, Hakka is in Yovitch or new elements that they didn't have last year. I just mentioned loves playing at a high level, Duncan has been resurgent for the majority of the season and Tyler's come back at some point. And so I look at all that and I'm like, okay, with all of that, they have, I suppose got a lot more to work with than he had last year. And last year he and Jimmy made something out of nothing and got all the way to the finals before it ran out of gas against the better team that they're going to be seeing on this Wednesday night. But when I come back, I want to dive on this and on some of my concerns about this because again, I understand like teams lose to teams in the regular season all the time and then elevate in the playoffs that happened is happened a lot. And it's also happened a lot for the heat where, as I've mentioned, 2005, 2006 season, I can tell you the storyline the entire year, whether Stan was the coach or even after Pat took over was they could not be the good team like they kept losing to teams that they ultimately beat in the playoffs, because their budding star went nuclear and made all of that not matter. Okay. And again, we're at the same point where it's like Jimmy's going to have to do the same damn thing. And I, that's the question is Jimmy at 34 going to be able to do a Dwayne, did it what 23, 24? Yeah. Again, it's a big ask, it's a big ask, it's really a big ask because I mean, I don't know how you can be taken seriously with what he came out with last night. I'm just, I'm, I'm not getting it. Like I said, it's, it feels like Mickey Mouse's clubhouse. If you have a, if you've ever had a young child, you, you, you know that PTSD that that brought back last night. He's in between. I think. I suppose. All right. Anyway, well, so am I, except mine doesn't grow back anymore. So I'm, I'm always in between here five cut, you know, okay, three minutes. Here's 20 bucks. We're done. Anyway, what to tell you about the great sponsors, the five reason sports network. And that includes our friends over at better edge use code, excuse me, five RSN, you get $20 to play. One of the reasons we promote better edge here is it is legal in the state of Florida, which we know has been an issue for some of late, they are legal in the state of Florida. Go to better edge.com use code five RSN. I can tell you that another operator that a lot of you are using the advantage of this is that you can find the line that you want. So it's basically a marketplace you put in the line you want, you know, just take the line that they thrown out there to kind of hook you. So check it out, better edge.com use the code five RSN or five reasons and get $20 to play. My concern, a couple of concerns, but my concern about this is that they have not found a style yet. They've not found an identity yet. You know, at least I mentioned the '06 season, it kind of became apparent over the course of that season that Shaq, although he did come back from injury and had a better attitude when Pat took over from Stan because he had to because he didn't respect Stan after that. One season for particularly when Stan wouldn't get him the ball in the post of the fourth quarter when Wade was playing without a rib cage muscle and Shaq never forgave Stan for that. But he came back and but by the end of that season, I went through some of the numbers. Dwayne's numbers kept elevating late in that year, okay. And so they had a style, they basically it was Dwayne, you know, he was going to spray it out to guys because he was drawing more consistent doubles over the course of that. Nobody told Avery Johnson in the finals, but I can tell you late in that season, he was and but he was learning how to play out of that. And again, it was, you knew he was going to be there every night, every night, no inconsistency of effort or hey, we have to decide in the first six minutes if we think that Jimmy cares tonight. Like, I'll take this out at last night too. And I thought Jimmy was fine again. I don't blame him for last shot at all. He didn't have a rebound or a steal through three quarters. That's telling. We've talked about those stats like when he's doing those things, you know, he's into the game. I that's that's sort of is the tell, right? It's like steals, rocks, three steals in particular, right? And he didn't and he did not have a rebound until he came back in the fourth quarter and just a ball, like bouncing into his hand. There's nobody around him. He wasn't a box or anything. That's you don't again, when he's when he's into it, he's getting offensive rebounds, put backs of his own misses. And again, steals, he's in the passing lanes. He's creating havoc. You didn't really see that last night. And so this is my thing is like, I don't know Greg, what their style is. And I don't think they know it like when they were playing well after the seven game losing streak, they got back to we call the defensive identity, right? Well, the cornerstone to that identity is bam. Just like the cornerstone to their energy is Jimmy, right? But to their defense overall, it's bam. He makes everything go. And I guess we'll go back to what we talked about in like the seventh minutes episode. He hasn't looked right lately and he hasn't looked right on defense either. It's a foul line. So you may be right about injury, but I so this way I come into it like we got we're less than 20 games and until this thing kicks off and like, what is this team? They're going to they're going to have to be a group that either finds the catches lighting in a bottle or shoots really well and has individual efforts from a couple of guys that go above and beyond and then the shooting fortifies around it. Or they just figure stuff out and make us all look stupid because they're the Miami Heat and people call them the culture zombies, etc. And so that'll come through and Spolster will, you know, like pull a rabbit out of the hat. But it's more, I think it's more likely that you get a couple guys shooting above their heads for a good stretch. Jimmy Locksen, Bam has to be better. The defensive identity was where I thought that's when that win streak or winning stretch after I declared them dead, part of why I thought that was real is it got back to defense. And so right. Bam's not going to be right. It's going to be hard to fortify the defense any better than they have. So I think that they're on thin ice, as that's concerned, Denver is going to be a tough matchup coming in there. So I'm not particularly, that's the word that I'm looking for here, I'm not particularly confident. Yes. Thank you. Okay. So here's the other part, and this is a blessing and a curse, okay. They don't have that many more opportunities this season to have signature wins because the schedule is soft. And we thought that was a good thing until Washington came in with 10 wins and Coosman Kisper destroyed them, right? So I'm looking at the rest of the schedule here. Okay. They've got this nuggets game, ESPN game. So we know they're losing, right? What is the last national TV game they won? I can't remember one, maybe the Portland game. Oh, yeah. The Portland. Does that count? Well, they got up to a slow start in that one. That was embarrassing for a little while, but you're right. That probably is the last one. I was going to say the playoffs last year might have been the last time. I just feel as a consistent thing. When the heat started embodying dolphin qualities, not a good thing, particularly on this game, because dolphins fans are in their feelings about basically losing the entire defensive roster today. But when they started, and one of the things, the two things that dolphins have been known for in recent years as they've tried to win their first playoff game in longer than it takes to become legal to drink in this country, it's now a 22 years. I actually, sorry, no one said almost 23 years at this point. Here's the issue is one, they always lose on national TV, the dolphins do, and they don't be good teams. We're talking about the whole year with the dolphins, and then it played out. But here's the opportunities, so it's the nuggets on a Wednesday, they got to in Detroit, and I swear if they don't win, both of those don't come all. After the Washington game, if they said he's looking past and there ain't anything to do in Detroit to distract you, the spring break, they're all here. I can tell you, if you go on Fort Lauderdale Beach or Miami Beach where they're charging $100 for parking, everybody from Michigan is here. There's nothing to do in spring break in Detroit, so the guys should be rested for that three o'clock game on the 17th, which is a Sunday game, so you've got to get both those. Then they go to Philly, that's not a signature win with them beat out, I'm sorry, I mean you've got to get it, but it's not a signature win at Cleveland, they're all rosters out, like Mitchell's out, Strus is out, right, I don't know if Max will be back next week, it seems like he's further away than Mitchell, nobody's out. Okay, Pelicans at home, well that'll be a significant game, that was a good win by the way, when they won there, that'll be significant because it's coming off of the fight there the last time, signature win, I don't know, he fans will get geeked up about it, but Cleveland at home, okay, if Mitchell's back, maybe it has, you know, considering what he did to them last time here, maybe that has a little bit more, you know, a punch to it, but again, I don't know how healthy they're going to be. Warriors at home is not a signature win at this stage, winning in Golden State Greg was a good win this year on that road trip, but it's not a signature win beating, the Warriors are 500 team, you know, even if ESPN still thinks it's 2019 or whatever, or 2018, then Trailblazers at home, ain't a signature win at Wizards, no, nicks at home by then, maybe healthier, right, chance there, but again, like if that's really your signature wins, I mean, if we're like having to conjure up like Sacramento on the road in New York late in the season, that's rough. Well, the Sacramento one is good, right, because no Jimmy, and you won anyway, but then that just plays into the narrative that they can't win when the roster is healthy, right? And then that the Sixers at home, I'm not expecting MBD back for their Houston's not a signature win, they'll be there eliminated for they'll be eliminated for the playoffs by then at Indiana, okay, team in the East, not a signature win at Atlanta, Dallas at home, no, not really, but it's a good win, you like, and then the Raptors for two. So as I'm reading it out, like this is a soft ass schedule, it really is. It is. But this is a team capable of losing to the Wizards and, you know, I'm just curious to see as we close here, I'm just curious to see like, can they build any momentum in any way? It's that last beyond a week, right? Probably more important for them to build momentum even against bad teams than it is to win one game on a Wednesday against Denver. So that's so weird to say, but I think they need to stack victories and start to build habits and find, get back to their play style and to me that that's going to be more telling as crazy as it is to say that than how they play against Denver. It's interesting way to look at it. I do think playing Denver is good for them because I think it's instructive in terms of the need to fortify at certain spots because, you know, Denver is, look, there's only one yokech, obviously in a certain way they kind of not lucked into because when you acquire a player by trade or free agency or draft or whatever it is, you got the player, but I mean, they didn't think yokech was going to be this, but it's basically like he makes everybody better. And so it's a multiplier kind of like when you had Nash on Phoenix or sorry, or it's supposed to be a multiplier with LeBron, it's not always, but you get the idea. But the thing is, Aaron Gordon is kind of the prototype to give the heat trouble. I mean, people talk about yokech, it's right, but it's really like having an athletic long fool who doesn't mind playing defense. Like that is kind of the model, and that just helps them that he's obviously a good offensive player too, but can finish over the next guys, like that's a big part of it. He's big. You know what I mean? He's big. And they can switch everything. Yeah. And they can switch everything. And we saw Porter who had a horrible finals against them. He had 30 in the last game and which was almost as many points as he had any entire five game series against the heat, but they're just they're just long in every position. It's just it's not just yokech's size, it's everything you have to deal with. And as much as, you know, I'm a proponent of a lot of the things Spulsher does, I do think they need to look at being a little bit more conventional. If they can't find like the freak type, like an Aaron Gordon to play the four, you know, a guy that level that just you just need to find a way to get bigger somewhere. And you know, the rosier here, a back court, which we may see very soon, doesn't move the needle in terms of giving you functional size at every position. So it's just it's you got to be something you either got to be big or you got to be really athletic and fast. And this team is kind of neither. So it's sort of relying on, you know, basketball IQ, guile, shooting ability in the case of some right, like, and, you know, the power of friendship, I guess. So we'll see that the power of friendship is enough to overcome the nuggets. All right. Thanks. Thanks to Greg. We hope you all have the power of friendship to get through that exercise on Sunday night. We'll just pretend it didn't happen from here on forward. Check out our sponsors. Better edge. Just go to five RSN and water cleanup of Florida. Good day, everybody. Thank you for listening to the five on the floor on the fibers and sports network. After all, someone needs to listen to my dad. [BLANK_AUDIO]
