Ditch the Bucket, Grab A Lifejacket

The Good Ship Lolly-Bron is a sinkin in Miami.

The Heat are only 9-8, Wade has sucked all year, non-hype machine roll players like Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller are hurt, Juwan Howard got himself into a fight against the horrible Wizards and LeBron is bumping into the coach all over the place while his crew let it be known how unhappy Bron-Bron is with Coach Spolestra.

Right, like the Coach had anything to do with this debacle. This abortion was orchestrated by Wade, approved by LeBron and date raped by Chris Bosh. Everyone seemed to think that the Heat would be able to outscore everybody and that their nonexistent inside game and defense wouldn't be an issue. Actually, calling any defense that features Joel Anthony in the middle is worse than nonexistent. It's actually worse than just playing with only four guys.

While everyone saw the frontline as being junior college level, nobody saw Dwayne Wade turning into a matador. He's been getting torched all year by scrubs. The only way you can cover up Joel Anthony is to keep guys from getting to the paint. So far, the Miami paint has been more crowded than the Gold Club on two-for-one night. Easier to score in too.

All of this might not be a problem except that Wade and LeBron can't play together. Everybody thinks that trading Bosh is the way to go to get things back on track but that doesn't help the Wade/Bron problem. What they need to do is see if they can turn Wade into an Anderson Varejo type player. Hell, Cleveland might even take Wade for Varejo and Williams. Wouldn't that be ironic.

Miami is going to have to do something quick because LeBron's tit bump of the Coach was just a shot across the bow of the organization. The days of the Do Anything for the Team/Organization LeBron are gone. He's gone full heel, sacrificed his reputation and historical legacy. He's not interested in being a team player. If he's going to not be winning a championship (or seven) then he's going to want to be a stat machine and own that team. Coach Spo was just the first guy to be thrown overboard the Good Ship. Next comes Wade, blaming injuries, the media and finally Riley.

Should be good times for the rest of us, especially if you live in Los Angeles, Boston or Orlando.

Miami Lukewarm's

Nine games into the NBA season and it's clear that the Miami Heat's recording breaking, seven title run is going to be a tough task. Breakdown!

Point Guard - Carlos Arroyo would be bad as your sixth/seventh man but if he's starting, I don't think you can win a title. After all Wade, Bron and Bosh need somebody to flow the offense. Otherwise it's way out of sync and hard for more than one guy to get involved. It looks like an international game when the US team never practiced together before the tournament started. In tonight's game, Bron goes off and D-Wade disappears.

Center - Joel Anthony. I hadn't heard of him until Miami signed him. He can't be playing meaningful minutes on any serious team. Sucks on offence, soft as Jell-O on defense. Serves no purpose other than to eat up space.

Chris Bosh - Had a pretty decent night tonight on offense but was awful on defense. You might be able to get away with this on certain teams (Nowitzki's Mav's, Stoudamire's Suns) but not when Joel Anthony is at C. This leaves the frontcourt nearly unguarded and completely outmanned on the glass. LeBron can be a lock down defender but he can't guard the whole baseline, especially when Arroyo is getting torched by opposing PG's off the dribble. Easy baskets abound. Bosh needs to do more than 15 and 7 to justify his matador D.

Chemistry - As of right now, LeBron and Wade can't play well together, especially without a real PG directing traffic. They can only really make shot opportunities for themselves, so when they try and get in the game, it has to come at the expense of the other. When one of them goes out, the team play gets far crisper. They should do line shifts like a hockey team.

Grit - Nobody on this team has any toughness. Maybe Udonis but he's a 6-7 PF who doesn't scare anybody. James, Wade and Bosh all lack any kind of rough edge. When you hear LeBron talking about how they need to be chippy, that's the sign that he can't do it. You never heard Laimbeer, Rambis, McHale or KG talking about the need to be "a little chippy" they just clotheslined people. I'm not sure other elite teams are afraid of or respect Miami at all right now.

Coaching - I didn't understand why Cleveland ran a slow offense when they had LeBron and I really don't get why Miami runs a slow O either. When you have skill guys like Wade and James who work best in open spaces and a guy like Bosh who only works at all in an up tempo game where he can focus on offense and not play so much half court D, you have to push it up the court every possession. Miami put themselves in this hole by signing human statute Ilgauskas, marginal Haslem, a washed up Eddie House and a PG who can't start or run the break. So far the result has been 2 losses to Boston where they trailed by 20.

I'm not sure what Miami can do to solve these problems. I don't think there's any way they can admit defeat and trade Bosh for size and rebounding and there isn't a pass oriented PG out there who can play any D. The only guards out there are Allen Iverson types who choke the life out of the ball, not what Miami needs. The Heat are still going to have a really good regular season record because James and Wade will feast on the plethora of awful teams in the NBA but come playoff time they won't be able hide these deficiencies, especially the horrendous D. Boston isn't exactly an offensive juggernaut and they dropped 112 on them tonight. On the road. Yikes. Miami reminds me of the Seattle Mariners in the late 90's. Good enough to win 90-100 games because they feasted on bad teams in the west but they always got trounded by the Yankees or Red Sox because they weren't dominant in any one area. Unless Wade or James really changes their game and become a magic-esque point guard/forward, I don't see how they get into the finals. They'll be like Orlando last year, sweep the hapless Atlanta Hawks then get outclassed by Boston.

FUN FACTS! - Here are some fun stat lines from tonights game(amazing it was even close):

Joel Anthony - 8 min, 0 pts., 0 reb., 0 ast., 1 pf. This guy was the starting C.

Carlos Arroyo - 10 min., 4 pts., 0 everything else. That includes assists. This guy started at PG.

D-Wade - 40 min.(!), 8 pts., 1 reb., 3 asts. James went off, so he couldn't.

Haslem - 33 min., 21 pts., 10 reb. Udonis can't be counted on to play 33 min at C. He's 6-8. KG, Dwight Howard, Big Baby will eat him up.

Z - 19 minutes, 6 pts., 6 rebs. There isn't a stat to quantify horrible D but if Z is in for 19 minutes and only giving you 6 & 6, you're screwed.

Eddie House - 13 pts., 0 asts. No assists for either PG. Nice. Rondo had 16.

Mario Chalmers - The supposed next Rondo played 5 min and racked up 1 whole rebound.

The NBA! It's FAAAANTAS . . . . Well, It's A League I Suppose

The NBA was jolted into activity by two massive stories concerning player movement this offseason.

The first one was when Raja Bell held conference to let it be known that the Miami Heat are his free agent destination of choice.

Pat Riley was seen nearby rolling his eyes while telling the janitor "Well, I guess we can cancel that LeBron interview now."

In a non-related but equally ridiculous story, the Orlando Magic are thinking about trying to dump Vince Carter for Agent Zero (Gilbert Arenas).

Apparently the deal hinges on getting the ok from Dwight Howard.

Really Orlando? You need to get the green light from a guy who shoots 50% from the stripe, gets schooled by Rasheed Wallace every year and disappears in the clutch? I don't recall the Pistons being held hostage by Ben Wallace or the Bulls by Dennis Rodman.

Seriously, if you can dump Vince, you dump him. I don't care what Dwight "No Nickname" Howard thinks about it. If he complains, just show him some game film from the Boston series and send him packing. All we learned this year is that if Dwight is your best player, you ain't winning.

This is the problem with the NBA. Second tier players trying to make noise. Raja Bell is a homeless mans Toni Kukoc and that's only in a D'Antoni offense and at this point, Dwight is only the defensive version of Nique, nothing more.

When teams start clearing cap space 3 years in advance to try and woo you, then you hold a player summit. Not before.

I'm looking your way Joe Johnson.