We Want You! To quit hating, enlist now.

What should we do? Should Pat Riley admit it was a mistake to mold this championship-bound team? Should he remind you that he has done this before? Or should we give you a list Pat Riley's accomplishment since joining the league. What should we do? Should Wade, James, and Bosh have gone their separate ways?  Wade should have gone to the Knicks and make Spike Lee a happy fellow, right? Should Bosh have stayed in Toronto and been another underrated superstar? Should James admit that the decision was a punk move or better yet, called himself a dumbass on national TV? Hmm I guess they were not trying to figure how to beat the other guy. Or maybe it’s our fault. Maybe we led you guys to think it would have been a cakewalk to NBA Championship since we do have two of the top three players. Maybe we led you guys to think we were the team to beat. Maybe it’s our fault that we destroyed the balance of power for the NBA. Maybe it’s our fault that you failed to realize that your constant criticism and bashing of the Miami Heat made us stronger.

            On July 9th Miami Heat officially, became the most hated team in the NBA. The fact of the matter was two of the top three players played on one team. It broke the unwritten balance of power law that states "no team should be in the possession of two of the top three players of the league." It’s just not fair, to put in in little kids’ term. You’re worried that it will guarantee us a championship. Truth is three people alone cannot get any NBA team a championship. We still had to get Cerberus, Miami heat trio of Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and LeBron James, companions to make us a championship-bound team.  The preseason and regular season injuries to Dwyane Wade, Mario Chalmers, Mike Miller, and Udonis Haslem did not help us achieve what we were trying to achieve. Contrary to popular belief it did not automatically make us the team to beat. But you guys kept saying otherwise, forcing one head of the Cerberus to proclaim, "Lakers are [still] the team to beat."

            On Tuesday, October 26 the new look Miami Heat made their debut against the Boston Celtics. It was set to be a great even but turned sour quickly as some of the Heat players, particularly Dwyane Wade, failed to find their touch. It was as if the Heat players just met each other twenty minutes before tip-off. If you were watching the game a lone you would have assumed the Heat were down big, but they lost by only eight points, 88 to 80. Some people might say eight is still a lot of points but teams can easily go on a 9-0 run, things we see a lot of lately. After one game people already assumed it was a "heartless experiment" or simply, the Miami Heat was a bust. The next two games against the Philadelphia 76ers and the Orlando Magic seemed like the Heat we were all expecting them to look like with a 97-87 romping of the Philadelphia 76ers and a 96-70 shellacking of the Orlando Magic. People were already calling the Heat-Magic game a fluke. Nevertheless, the Heat went on a four game winning streak before losing a heartbreaker to the Hornets. We picked it up against the New Jersey Nets winning by twelve, 101-89. The win against the Nets could not prepare us for the next game against the Utah Jazz. Paul Millsap at the time was a two out of twenty three point field goal shooter but went three for three and brought the Jazz back to win the OT thriller, 116-114. The next game in a rematch against the Boston Celtics the Heat dropped another one, falling 112-107. That loss brought us down to being only one game over .500 and prompted one head of Cerberus to declare, "We’re the best five and four team in the league." Which they did prove by winning the next three games before dropping a tough game to the Memphis Grizzlies thanks to Rudy Gay shooting a fadeaway jumper over LeBron James.

            The loss to the Grizzlies would be the start of the team’s low point; As the Heat dropped the next two games against the Indiana Pacers and in a rematch against the Indiana Pacers before winning against the 76ers and then losing another against the Dallas Mavericks. That slump prompted fans to turn against each other on whether or not to fire Miami Heat’s head coach, Erik Spolestra. The same guy who took over from Riley in 08-09. Before he took over the team went 15-67. From assistant coach/video coordinator to assistant coach/advance scout to assistant coach/director of scouting and now head coach. In 08-09 the team started 7-8 and went 43-59 but lost in the first round, 4-3 against the Hawks. Last year the team started 9-6 and went 47-35 but once again lost in the first round 4-1 against the Celtics. The Media highly played it out and even prompted them to create a countdown till Spolestra’s departure/Riley’s return. It tried to create rifts between players and coaches and tried to make us question ourselves, was this truly a good idea? The loss to the Dallas Mavericks would prove to be the final straw for us as we held a players only meeting. It proved to be what we needed.

            After the players only meeting the team went on a five game winning streak defeating the Washington Wizards, Detroit Pistons, Cleveland Cavilers, Atlanta Hawks, and the Milwaukie Bucks. But the streak was downplayed greatly by the opposition as they pointed out four of the five games were against teams under .500 and the Atlanta Hawks were missing a crucial player in Joe Johnson. The team did not take a last second shot to beat the opposition. As Daryl Morey says, "Good teams don't win close games -- they avoid them." The streak would not have been a big deal if the Miami Heat won by a handful of points but we won by at least eleven points and have the opposition average 82.2 points per game. At that time we allowed the second least points with 91.7 points per game and forced our opponents to shoot a field goal percentage of 46.5, which was ranked number one in the league. Let me take a couple of seconds to remind you that some of the teams that we defeated helped add to the four game Lakers skid, the Cleveland Cavilers defeated the Boston Celtics, and that the Hawks team minus Joe Johnson defeated the Orlando Magic the next day. Also the team to beat, the Los Angeles Lakers, was at the time a mere 1-4 against teams with winning records while the Heat was 2-7 against teams with a winning record, if I asked anybody (although the real probability for them to beat a team over .500) they would rather have a twenty-eight percent chance to beat a team with a winning record then a twenty-five percent chance. After the Bucks game the team extended the streak to seven, avenging their loss against the Utah Jazz, and thrashed the Golden State Warriors. Hopefully we can keep this momentum going and break records. But for now, the recent thrashing of the Warriors seemed to keep the haters quiet for some time but hey what can we do, haters will keep on hating. For the haters:

And we won't stop. Lets go Heat.