The Heat Went Streaking

Any Person interested in sports more so than just the casual viewer is aware that the Miami heat have just recently finished a run off of 27 games in a row without a single loss. Besides the fact that they have the polarizing  "Big Three," with Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, the Heat are also the defending NBA Champs taking every teams best shot night in and night out. ESPN and the media took note, as with everything else Miami Heat, of the run early on admiring the teams play when the streak reached into the teens. The beginning brought a series of games when Lebron James seemed like he couldn't miss and shot nearly sixty percent from the field for nearly six consecutive games. Wade and Bosh and a number of others have been overlooked because of the all time great play we have seen from James. The steals, ball handling, and the dunks have become custom from the guys in Heat uniforms the past few years, but we have not seen the level of play and consistency in a single sport in a good number of years. The NBA season is a long and tiresome ride of 82 games where teams often play every other night. They say that they days are long but they years are shot, which is no different in the streaks case. Although media coverage day after day made the steak seem like it lasted a year we now can look back on the two months of win after win in great appreciation while realizing they actually failed triumphantly in their effort to do what was thought impossible.

The 1972 Lakers have the streak of 33 straight wins that the Miami Heat were in desperate search of. We can look back to see that the NBA has seventeen teams compared to thirty now. One could see they has Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain on their roster, albeit near the end of their careers. Many of the top basketball players in the world were in the American Basketball Association (Julius Dr. J Irving) creating somewhat of a watered down or diluted NBA at the time. The Lakers streak and The Heats streak are two of the greatest in basketball history and to compare them would only downplay the significance of them both. All fans will have their own opinion but today were talking Heat.

The Miami Heat have the best basketball player on earth as well as a few more that are not too far off the list. Lebron James can do amazing things on the court that we have never seen. He is tops in the league in more categories than one player should humanly be. He has used the gifts he has been given and added hard work to strengthen his game over the years and is at the pinnacle of the basketball world. The Championship ring has opened his game up and allowed him to play more free and thoughtless while performing his art of choice in basketball. The 27 game win streak gave us the platform to celebrate the greatness of a player in the now, while he is in front of us. Hate it or love it the Heat are the face of the NBA and have people interested because it is exciting to see what they can do with potential greatness. One of the brightest men in the NBA, Shane Battier, gave a speech to the team that not much has yet been heard of. Apparently he gave a Hollywood like performance talking to his team after win number 1 and told them to "touch the fans" saying that the fans "wanted to be touched emotionally and inspirational and that they as a team had that capability." Teammates have commented and said that they fed off of the message he channeled to them and they had run with it.





The level of play in athletics today is at a high and is only going to continue to grow. Although the Miami Heat needed no more coverage of their recent streak it is nice, and only reasonable to reflect on what we have seen and appreciate the effort and determination we saw from mega rich athlete men who chose to band together and take on the whole league piece by piece every night during the streak. To understand how hard they worked we can look at the week and a half since the streak ended to a deflated Chicago Bulls team to see that they are beginning to rest James, Wade and others because of the tests they put their bodies through during "the streak." So in regard to the effort and entertainment throughout the season from the Heat team I add one more 'salute'. Now to hammer down their legacy they will prepare for the playoffs and a possible third straight finals appearance.