But not everything rides on these last few contests. Seventy-plus games tell you a lot about a team, both good and bad. Here are five things the Miami Heat's regular season taught us.
1.
If nothing else comes from this season, finding a role for Winslow is a success. He may not be the best player on a future championship team, but he's proving he can be a viable second or third option on a title contender.
2. Dwyane Wade's retirement tour has been a roaring success. Dwyane Wade's final season could have gone sideways. It could have been derailed by a knee injury. The Heat could have been terrible, well out of the playoff picture by now. Or Wade could have just flat-out stunk.
None of those things occurred. Wade has been fantastic in his role off the bench and has stayed relatively healthy. The Heat is in the playoff chase with a few weeks left in the season. Teams and fans around the league have treated him with respect and honored him along the way.
We couldn't have wished for a better farewell for the greatest player in Miami sports history. Heat fans may want a championship for Wade in June, but no matter what, he has stuck the landing on his way to retirement.
3. Pat Riley opened up about the Miami Heat's future (and his). It's been a puzzling last three years watching Pat Riley and the Heat pretty much fall apart. The team mistakenly let Wade walk in free agency after admittedly being cold to him during free agency talks. Riley agreed to long-term deals for role-player veterans who performed uncharacteristically well on one-year show-me deals, torpedoing the team's salary-cap flexibility in the process.
Nobody knew what the plan was, but this season, Riley set the record straight. He laid out a plan for the team. The fans needed it to set the table for the future.
Riley is giving this championship thing one more try. He gave us a glimpse into his plan to accomplish that in a few sit-down interviews during the last few months. Now, everyone knows what the future holds.
4. Josh Richardson and Bam Adebayo are a lot of fun.
Miami clearly has a supporting cast just yearning for a
5. The Heat resisted the urge to tank, and it paid off. Before the season began, a lot of Heat fans would have been fine with the team losing 60 games this season. That might sound terrible, but when a once-in-a-generation talent such as Duke's LeBron-in-training
The Heat didn't go that route, however. Miami worked its way through injuries and turmoil to earn a chance to compete for a title, even if it's as the eighth seed in the East. In Wade's final season, that makes sense.
It was a good move by the Heat and is an even better look for the future.
