Following a third consecutive loss (in a franchise record-breaking way nonetheless), former head coach and team president Pat Riley is optimistic that the Miami Heat won't take long to rebuild into a championship contender.
Franchise-record-for-a-loss 130 points for Miami tonight.
Heat were 15-0 all-time when scoring 129 or more.
— Tim Reynolds (@ByTimReynolds) December 21, 2016
The Heat were up by five on the Orlando Magic on Tuesday, but thanks to a Josh Richardson missed free-throw, a careless missed box out by Justise Winslow and a wild flip shot by the Magic's Serge Ibaka, the game went into overtime. The game then went into another overtime, which net Miami a 136-130 loss.
Even though all the signs point to a long road of teaching and adding functional pieces to the puzzle, Riley is insistent the Heat will rebuild very fast.
“We’re in a rebuild with young players that we’re familiar with and we have five or six guys that we really like,” Riley told Frank Urbina of FanSided. “They will form a nucleus, two or three them. Tyler Johnson got 32 points coming off the bench and Hassan [Whiteside] had 32 [points] and 15 [rebounds in Tuesday’s double overtime loss to Orlando]. We have some very good young players. Justise Winslow and Josh Richardson, they have been thwarted by their injuries. Justise missed [16] games [with a wrist injury]. Josh missed seven weeks with an MCL [sprain]. So, they’re a little bit behind. But we love our young core. And what we have is flexibility. And you need flexibility in this league to be able to move quickly. You can’t get paralyzed by the cap or not being able to make room and being able to trade players.”
While what he's said is certainly true, there's a disparaging difference between liking a core of players and being ready to compete in the Eastern Conference. While these players are showing flashes of brilliance, what wins games is consistency, more so than bright performances sprinkled here and there.
“We have a first round pick this year. So we’re dealing with it. We’re dealing with that word that you hate to use – that we have to rebuild,” said Riley. “But we will rebuild quick. I’m not going to hang around here for three or four years selling this kind of song to people in Miami. We have great, great fans. They’ve been used to something great over the last 10 years and so right now we’re taking a hit. I think we can turn this thing around. As I said, if five of those [close] losses were turned into wins we could be in the playoffs right now. But they didn’t. You can use that word rebuild. But we’re going to do it fast.”
While Whiteside is a great building block to start with, it's hard to say a team can go places without a certified leader in the starting lineup, thing Miami doesn't have at the time being. Maybe the acquisition of a veteran can tune these younger players into the stars they can be, but as it is right now, building blocks and just blocks and they don't turn into statues until you find something to shape them with.
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