The painfully quick fall of the Miami Heat

We all knew this was coming. The Heat's championship was a one and done deal. Riles made a Faustian deal to get a championship to Miami. He violated sports karma by forcing out a very good coach in Stan Van Gundy so that Riles could claim the glory of bringing the first NBA title to Miami. He got an aging Shaquille O'Neal, teamed him with Dwayne Wade, and surrounded those two with aging role players like Alonzo Mourning, Antoine Walker, James Posey and Jason Williams. There were no long term prospects for this team. They traded whatever future they may have had with Caron Butler and Lamar Odom for quick results. And they got it. So every move they made to get to that championship is justified. But now we're seeing the consequences of those deals. Shaq has a bum hip and is a shadow of himself. Wade is constantly injured from driving recklessly to the basket, yet he's the only consistently good player on the team. Udonis Haslem, the other promising young talent on the team, is out with an ankle injury. Jason Williams, when he's healthy, is streaky at best, both as a passer and a shooter. Posey's gone and with him any semblance of defensive intensity on the team. Walker's gone, but that's actually a good thing. This team would be much worse with him. The Heat are finally getting a look at Dorrell Wright, but he doesn't seem to be all that good right now.

The Heat, two years removed from an NBA title, one year removed from a playoff appearance, are the worst team in basketball. They haven't won 10 games yet. They get blown out by mediocre teams like the Toronto Raptors. The Heat have lost 19 of their last 20 games, and three of those losses have been by 30 points. There's no other way around it: this team stinks.

It's amazing that any team with Dwayne Wade could be this bad. Even when he scores 40 points, they lose. There is no talent around him at all. And now this: the Heat may trade Shaq for Marcus Banks and Shawn Marion and strangely, this deal doesn't look like the Heat getting 20 cents on the dollar. I mean Marcus Banks and Shawn Marion for one of the greatest centers of all time? Marcus Banks being mentioned in a trade deal with Shaq? This is how far Shaq has fallen. Maybe a trade to Phoenix will buy his career an extra year or two, but it's hard to see him fitting in with the running and gunning style of the Suns.

For the Heat, the deal means potentially starting from scratch, albeit scratch that includes one of the league's best players (when he's healthy) in Wade. The deal would give them salary cap relief and flexibility. They could then blow the money on bad pickups, as has been their history (Shaq aside) or they can use the draft to add young talent and pick up role players at bargain prices to surround the nucleus of Wade and Haslem. While they're getting rid of overpaid talent, they should consider dumping Ricky Davis, the classic good player on a bad team who never makes his bad team good, and Mark Blount, who fluctuates between completely useless and somewhat competent.