Have the Heat met expectations this season?

Nekias Duncan and Steve Jones Jr. are joined by Couper Moorhead of HEAT.com and the ‘After The Buzzer’ podcast to discuss Miami’s performance so far this season . Check out the full conversation on “The Dunker Spot and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

What were your expectations of this Miami Heat team heading into the year with reported changes coming to the offense, some rotation things, you get the acquisition of Norman Powell?

Like, how were you feeling about the Heat heading in, and how has that kind of, you know, how has that kinda matched or maybe exceeded your expectations, or where are you kinda at with them right now?

Yeah, I think they’re a little bit along the lines of what I expected, maybe a, a few, a, a, like a win or two above, but not, not quite.

in large part it’s because, you know, last year with, with the saga that was going on with the roster, they just never really had a chance to come together, and they were just figuring out who they were going to be in the post Jimmy era in those two months after that deal.

So coming to this summer, then you get Norm in the off-season, which, you know, is a great trade.

Norm has been awesome.

But you kinda come in, Tyler gets hurt a week before training camp, so we spent all this summer talking about Norm and Tyler playing together, and then Tyler gets taken out of the equation for a lengthy period of time.

Now you’re already readjusting your, y- you know, calibrating your, your expectations.

And I’m sure you guys are the same way.

Every time you hear a coach saying, “We’re gonna play faster,” you know, i- in preseason, it’s the same thing as a guy coming in and saying like, “I added 15 pounds of muscle.”

You almost kinda hear it, it goes in one ear, out the other.

You don’t really take it too seriously.

And even Spo has said it before going into training camp.

Spo has wanted to play faster before.

Mm-hmm.

And then they come in, and maybe they’ll play faster for a week, and then all of a sudden their pace is back down, you know, in 20 to 30 range.

This year, the pace has been for real.

They’ve stuck with it.

And, you know, it took a week or so to really wrap my mind around what this offense was going to be because we’ve only had– the only precedence we’ve had is what Memphis ran last year without, without taking all the screens and handoffs out of the system, where the Heat have been a handoff heavy, screen heavy system for a long time.

So within, you know, all these managing the expectations and then completely revamping the offense, which I, which I think Spo deserves credit for because not every coach is going to be willing to just scrap everything they’ve done before.

And he, he admits he was, you know, pushed into that a little bit based on his reaction to the Cleveland series and how, and how that went.

But, you know- Mm-hmm I, I think overall they maybe, you know, give or take a win or two here or there, they’re about where maybe you expected them to be.

The East has kinda shaped up, I guess, kinda how we expect the East to be as well.

But, you know, the five and six seed is still possible for them, so if they can climb up to be around there, then I think it’s, it’s a pretty good season based on where we thought they would be coming in.

Have the Heat met expectations this season?

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