Free of Expectations, the Miami Heat See Path to Success

New York Times

MIAMI — Dwyane Wade was 12, watching on television in Chicago, when Scottie Pippen leapt to the 3-point line, fingertips outstretched, to obstruct a Hubert Davis jump shot as the Knicks tried to salvage a pivotal playoff game against the Michael Jordan-less Bulls.

It was 1994, and a panicked Madison Square Garden exhaled when Davis made two free throws to seal Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. The whistle of the referee Hue Hollins spared the Knicks from facing elimination in Chicago against a three-time championship team that was tossed to the has-been heap when Jordan walked away before the season.

So was it a foul from where Wade sat?

“I’m on the Chicago side, so it was a bad call,” he said before Miami opened the post-LeBron James era Wednesday night with a 107-95 victory over the short-handed Washington Wizards behind Wade, Chris Bosh and point guard Norris Cole. “But if I was on the Knicks’ side, I guess that’s a good call.”

On the Knicks’ side that night, on the way to a seven-game N.B.A. finals defeat against Houston, was Coach Pat Riley, who has been Wade’s career-long ally in Miami, including the four years with James, or Heir Jordan.

The point is that Wade, as a young fan of those 1993-94 Jordan-less Bulls, who posted a 55-27 record, and Riley, who had the gel scared out of his well-groomed hair in that playoff series but survived its seven games, should know from the Bulls’ example that there could be life after James. There could be a run.

Logic tells us it won’t be a championship run. But however defined, “run” rhymes with “fun,” and as the former Bulls general manager Jerry Krause always said, overachieving in the face of utter dismissal can be recalled as fondly as actually winning it all.

“That team was exciting that year, obviously led by Scottie and Toni Kukoc,” Wade said, forgetting Horace Grant and, sacrilegiously, Coach Phil Jackson. “It said something about that team, but obviously every team is different, so I don’t know what it could say about this team. We still have good players. We still have a good team. We’re just not the headlining team that comes into a city and 40 people are following the bus.”

He laughed and added, “Now there’s probably one guy out there, three if we’re lucky.”

That’s what happens when James, the proverbial driver, disappears and takes the steering wheel with him, and when the replacement is Luol Deng, a nice piece but no main event.

Deng, in his 11th year, entered Wednesday having played all but 40 games of his career with Chicago, but he said he recalled no discussion of 55 victories sans Jordan. Only seasons that conclude with parades are commemorated. Still, Deng could speak to the satisfaction the Bulls felt competing hard and winning 45 and 48 games the past two seasons, most without the former N.B.A. most valuable player Derrick Rose.

“One thing we did really well was to tune out everybody, good or bad, just focus on the team,” Deng said. Asked what made him climb aboard a Miami bus presumably going in reverse, he said, “There wasn’t the mind-set that they weren’t going to win.”

Riley, the Heat’s fanatically competitive president, ranted over the summer at his high-priced free agents, mostly James. The takeaway quote: “You’ve got to stay together if you got the guts, and you don’t find the first door and run out of it.”

James returned to Cleveland, a destination that absolved him of not only gutlessness but also of disloyalty. Wade took a pay cut to presumably finish his career in Miami. Bosh, after rejecting Houston, got a maximum deal to earn the title of Heat Lifer, a new organization testimonial.

Wade is the true Miami lifer and the pride of Heat Nation — another mantra dreamed up to market cultural stability, the notion that the Heat are permanently among the N.B.A. elite. If Wade were four years younger and less brittle — he had to leave the court with a strained calf late in the third quarter Wednesday before returning in the last six minutes to help close out the Wizards — a season of 50 or more wins wouldn’t be far-fetched.

That would especially be true if Bosh is ready to play, as he insists he can, as a leading man for the first time since his days with the Raptors. He played the part Wednesday night with 26 points and 15 rebounds.

For years, people have pondered how Jordan’s legacy would have been affected had Hollins not blown his whistle and Jordan’s so-called supporting cast had gone on to the conference finals and the finals without him. But there have also been unhappier seasons after superstar departures: When Shaquille O’Neal left Los Angeles for Miami in a 2004 trade, Kobe Bryant and the Lakers dropped from 56 wins to 34.

It certainly will be great theater if the Heat can chase Cleveland and Chicago in the East. So much must go better than right for that to happen, but the challenge alone, Bosh said, might be a welcome change from the four-year championship-or-bust burden.

“With people counting us out, it’s easier to get yourself up,” he said.

On opening night, there was the familiar late-arriving capacity crowd, the public announcer who remained obnoxiously loud and a Heat team that looked committed to aggressive help defense.

The early-season goal, Bosh said, will be to “let people know we are still here.” To match the 1993-94 Bulls for succeeding in the absence of historic greatness, much more than attendance will be required.