It looks like the spirit of competition in the NBA is spreading on its teams' social media accounts, like the Miami Heat and the Phoenix Suns, and it's not even the playoffs. Moreover, notorious social media roaster Kevin Durant is somehow not involved. On Thursday, the Suns account on X, formerly Twitter, posted a thread of photos representing the fanbases of the teams they'll face in the upcoming season. While the thread is mostly playful, the Heat X account joined the ribbing but quoted the original post with a savage rejoinder.
As its reply, the Heat account uploaded a photo of the league's rankings of attendance numbers, saying, “Interesting. Check in when you climb into that 24th spot, @Suns 😉”
In the photo, the Suns are in 25th place with an average of 17,071 while the Heat is in fourth place with an average of 19,749. Also, check out the original thread for yourself.
Heat vs. Suns?
It's interesting to see the differences in attendance numbers for two playoff teams with relatively similar results last season.
For instance, the Suns had won three more games than the Heat but they've made a bigger splash in the offseason. The Suns traded for Bradley Beal of the Wizards, forming a Big Three with Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, even after Durant's Brooklyn Nets tried the same thing and failed spectacularly.
As expected, the Beal addition didn't really fill the team's needs, particularly defensively, and the Minnesota Timberwolves outplayed the Suns in the playoffs en route to an embarrassing sweep. Three of their four losses were in double-digits, too. If I were a Suns fan I would also be very tempted to stop watching the team.
Meanwhile, the Heat also traded their aging point guard in exchange for a dynamic scorer who can punch up their offense. In their case, the Heat traded for Terry Rozier, sending Kyle Lowry to the Charlotte Hornets, though he ultimately ended up with the Philadelphia 76ers.
Scary Terry looked like a great fit for the Heat backcourt in his first few games there, but injuries to him and franchise player Jimmy Butler effectively doomed the Heat's playoff hopes. They had managed to qualify for the playoffs after beating the Chicago Bulls in the play-in tournament, but the eventual champion Boston Celtics took out their longtime rivals in five games.
There's probably nothing more painful than being a fan of a team that's always on the verge of winning it all, thanks to a solid team identity and excellent coaching, but always comes up short because they ran into generational players.
Finals success
In four years, the Heat have reached the NBA Finals twice, but they lost each time because they ran into LeBron James in 2020 and Nikola Jokic in 2023. Meanwhile, in the same span of time, the Suns enjoyed a 2-0 Finals lead, but yielded to a surging Giannis Antetokounmpo who practically grabbed the championship from them in six games.
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