{"id":114276,"date":"2025-06-21T11:43:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T11:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/114276\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T11:43:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T11:43:12","slug":"ask-ira-are-nba-playoffs-showing-heat-others-that-regular-season-success-remains-overrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/114276\/","title":{"rendered":"ASK IRA: Are NBA playoffs showing Heat, others that regular-season success remains overrated?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Q: Ira, saw your implied tweet after the Thunder loss about meaningless regular seasons. Explain yourself. \u2013 Felix.<\/p>\n

A: The take was this: The Cavaliers finished an East-best 64-18 and have been sidelined for more than a month; the Thunder finished an NBA-best 68-14 and are a loss from falling short of a championship. Save for the Celtics (another team with an early-playoff exit), there were no other dominant regular-season teams. So for all the talk of making the regular season matter more (don\u2019t even get me started on the in-season tournament), the reality is that we might have a fourth-place team winning a championship if the Pacers win on Sunday in Oklahoma City, and that would be after a sixth-place team made the Western Conference finals, which is what the Timberwolves did. Relentlessly pushing through the first 82 hasn\u2019t always meant strongest at the finish line, as this postseason\u2019s spate of injuries have shown. Does that mean embracing the players who pace themselves over the course of the regular season is the way to go? Not willing to go that far. But those players also might have a point. And don\u2019t forget the Heat\u2019s run to the 2023 NBA Finals from seventh place.<\/p>\n

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Q: Ira, my dream Miami Heat summer would be to acquire both Kevin Durant<\/a> and DeMar DeRozan without giving up Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro or Kel\u2019el Ware, and to re-sign Davion Mitchell. I think that would supercharge our offense and with all that star power on the team, maybe we could get some solid veterans on minimum contracts like we did during the Big Three Era. \u2013 Greg, Jacksonville.<\/p>\n

A; Your permutation could be possible, based on what would be yielded in a trade package for Kevin Durant, and therefore what would be left over for DeMar DeRozan. But I\u2019m not sure that such twin additions wouldn\u2019t be somewhat redundant as far as still lacking an attacking presence on offense. As for plus-ones jumping aboard, there is a different cap\/tax era than when the Heat were able to add the likes of Mike Miller, Shane Battler, Ray Allen and Chris Andersen. These days, you can only add so much.<\/p>\n

Q: Why does Player of the Year candidate Johni Broome get so little interest\/mention in the upcoming draft class<\/a>? \u2013 Carey.<\/p>\n

A:Classic \u2018tweener syndrome, an undersized center with footspeed concerns and below-the-rim offense. Basically, a college star potentially with the upside limit of having been a college star. Sort of a basketball Tim Tebow. Still, the type of grit and polish that could land him somewhere in the second round for a team who views him as a winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Q: Ira, saw your implied tweet after the Thunder loss about meaningless regular seasons. Explain yourself. \u2013 Felix.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1179,7,46,6549,491,3213,3532,981,938,189,6,11,475,114,1131,2742,2484,308,492],"class_list":{"0":"post-114276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-bam-adebayo","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-celtics","11":"tag-chris-andersen","12":"tag-davion-mitchell","13":"tag-demar-derozan","14":"tag-johni-broome","15":"tag-kelel-ware","16":"tag-kevin-durant","17":"tag-miami-heat","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-nba-playoffs","20":"tag-oklahoma-city","21":"tag-pacers","22":"tag-ray-allen","23":"tag-regular-season","24":"tag-the-cavaliers","25":"tag-timberwolves","26":"tag-tyler-herro"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114721181131427172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}