MIAMI — To the Miami Heat’s credit, there at least has been candor about just how trying a season this has been.
Expectations have not been met. Opportunities have been squandered. Disappointment often carried the day.
Which led to a question this past week to those in and around the organization, many who have been around from the start or close to the start:
Has this been the most disappointing/frustrating season of the franchise’s 35?
No, not the worst. Not with a pair of 15-67 clunkers in the mix. But that was with Ron Rothstein asked to drive an Edsel in the augural 1988-89 go-round and then the Heat in full tank-a-thon mode in 2007-08, when the closing-night rotation featured the likes of Stephane Lasme, Kasib Powell, Earl Barron and Mark Blount.
Those were times when you could see it coming, as it was with other trying seasons, when from the outset it was clear there either was not enough in place to contend or a goal of building toward something better for future seasons.
But when using both frustration and disappointment as the combined metrics of misery, an argument can be made that unless there is some type of miraculous postseason reversal and revival, 2022-23 has to go down as an all-time disappointment, if only because of where 2022-23 ended, one game, one victory, one shot shy of the second NBA Finals appearance in three seasons.
Yes, recency bias, certainly. But misery that also has been palatable.
So, has anything previous come close? It is a tough call, but we’ll offer a few as a means of comparison.
2006-07: Coming off the 2006 championship, the expectation of success certainly was greater than ultimately being swept out of the first round in 2007 by the Chicago Bulls. But considering that championship defense began with a 108-66 opening-night loss to the Bulls, perhaps could have seen it coming.
By midseason, Heat President Pat Riley, still serving as coach at the time, deactivated Antoine Walker and James Posey after deeming the two unfit for the Heat’s conditioning standards. At the same time, Riley was gone, too, so badly injuring his hip during a halftime tirade that a hip replacement was required.
Shaquille O’Neal was lost to early-season knee surgery; Dwyane Wade was gone at midseason with a shoulder injury. No, no fun, at all.
— 1994-95: Coming off a 42-40 season and the franchise’s second playoff berth, the team appeared to be turning a corner under Kevin Loughery. Then Loughery decided he wanted something else.
So Rony Seikaly was dealt on the eve of the season to the Golden State Warriors for Billy Owens, and Steve Smith and Grant Long were traded two games into the season to the Atlanta Hawks for Kevin Willis.
And, with that, all semblance of continuity was lost, the Heat careening to a 32-50 lottery finish, with Loughery fired after a 17-29 start.
The disappointment was so severe that it led to a franchise reset, Micky Arison taking over as owner at midseason, Riley arriving as president and coach months later, with the Heat back in the playoffs the next six seasons.
— 1998-99: The Allan Houston shot.
Sometimes frustration and disappointment can arrive in an instant. Houston’s season-ending shot in the opening-round winner-take-all game against the New York Knicks at the end of the lockout-shortened season still stings.
— 2017-18: This was a season built on the expectations created by the 30-11 finish to 2016-17, that Dion Waiters, James Johnson, Hassan Whiteside and the returning cast were ready for the next step.
In some ways it mirrored the hope created by the Heat this season returning almost all of last season’s roster.
Instead, a 44-38 finish and 4-1 first-round playoff loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, a season not even the return of Dwyane Wade could salvage.
— 2020-21: After coming within two games of a championship in the NBA quarantine bubble at Disney World, the Heat meandered to a 40-32 finish in the pandemic-shortened regular season.
That was followed by a 4-0 first-round ouster at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks.
At this point, it’s almost as if such a replication would be a step forward, the way this season has gone.
