Are the Miami Heat “bubble frauds”? That question has been asked a lot over the past several months.
After being swept out of the first round of the playoffs by the Milwaukee Bucks, that question will dominate NBA discussions this weekend, and it will be a primary topic throughout the offseason. It will linger into October and the start of the 2021-2022 NBA campaign for the Heat.
Is it a bad question? Not really. It's a completely understandable and obvious query. It certainly makes for a great discussion point, given how dramatically different the Heat performed in the 2021 playoffs compared to the 2020 Orlando bubble postseason.
Yet, if we are going to be honest about how we evaluate “pandemic basketball,” the bubble frauds question surrounding the Heat definitely isn't the best possible question one can ask.
The best question is: Why should we assume the 2021 NBA playoffs are less questionable — or more legitimate — just because they weren't played in a bubble after a multi-month layoff? Heat fans and other NBA fans need to ask this question.
Let's remember this about the 2021 NBA season: The scheduling for 2021 was far more problematic than in 2020. The 2020 oddity was the pandemic-based interruption of the schedule, which led to the bubble format after a long break. The 2020 playoffs, in which the Heat met the Lakers in the finals, were affected less by a bubble (though it did limit travel and crowds) than by the fact that stars were able to rest up for multiple months and heal most if not all of their injuries. Anthony Davis and LeBron James entered the bubble fresh. The value of that reality for the Lakers mattered far more than whether crowds attended games.
People will say, reasonably enough, that the Heat beat the Bucks because they didn't have to travel to Milwaukee. Maybe that's true… but it's not as though Miami had a partisan crowd on hand for those bubble games. They were played without a crowd in a genuinely neutral setting.
The Bucks turned the tables this year partly because they got a lot better. Jrue Holiday in, Eric Bledsoe out. THAT changed the series more than home-court advantage did. The Bucks created a better roster. Their roster wasn't good enough last year against the Heat. That doesn't really make Miami a bubble fraud.
This, however, is the biggest reason why the 2020 playoffs weren't fraudulent or somehow tainted, at least not in comparison to 2021: Look at all the injuries this year — not last year, but THIS year. The compressed pandemic schedule and the lack of a full-length offseason had a huge effect on the Heat and the Lakers, the two NBA Finals participants. Imagine having to go through the grind of making the finals and then getting basically one month (five to six weeks, more precisely) before the start of training camp in early December, preceding the season opener on Dec. 22, 2020.
The Heat were put at an extreme disadvantage this season. So, is THIS the weird and aberrational year, or was 2020 the aberrational year? If anything, 2021 was physically harder for players. The 2020 playoffs were mentally harder for NBA professionals who were unused to bubble life and had to deal with extreme social isolation in the early months of the pandemic.
Every team had to deal with the same circumstances in the 2020 playoff bubble, whereas in 2021, different teams have different fan attendance guidelines since each state and locality has its own pandemic regulations. If anything, 2021 is a less fair and equitable postseason than 2020. Crucially, 2021 has more injured frontline stars than 2020 did.
Mostly, though, it all comes back to this: The Heat had practically no offseason — no time for Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Jimmy Butler, Goran Dragic, and the rest of the core to rest, decompress, and recharge for the next NBA season. As soon as the pre-Christmas start date (to get all that TV money) was announced, the Heat's title chances took a big drop for anyone who was paying attention. Had this season started in February instead of late December, the Heat might have been healthy and fresh for this journey.
Was 2020 the fraudulent season, or is this early exit against the Bucks the true aberration? We won't really know until the 2022 season occurs… and by then, the Heat might have gained a supermax superstar who will lead them back to the finals anyway.
