and the “unintentional” thesis is ludicrous, they went there to try to win titles. it’s possible they didn’t fully realize how hot BOS/SA/DAL would start off, forcing them to up the intensity a bit, but basically I think that post is wrong from start to finish.

The interesting thing to me is that I think the Heat would be nearly as good if you took away, say Bosh and James, and replaced them with some top defensive players like, say, Josh Smith and Joakim Noah. Wade is just as capable of getting difficult shots as easily as any of the other guys. He could take all of them likely to similar results.

I give Spoelstra a lot of credit — his “get a stop and you can freelance” bargain with the team motivated these guys defensively, while allowing them to maintain the illusion that their superstar offense skills are making a difference. I also credit fear. Unintentionally, the “big three” put a lot of pressure on themselves. Before changing teams, they had excuses. They already got their props for sticking it out on teams without any other great talents, and any success they had was sugar on top. Now the bar is raised, and anything short of championship contention would be greatly humiliating. It’s a great motivator, especially for Bosh and James who have shown questionable ability to raise their intensity level.

The fact that their egotism and selfishness has sort of accidentally led them to come to realize the level of intensity required to win a championship is kind of disappointing to me, but maybe that’s how we all learn.

Z-man: Maybe we should have just kept McGrady….check out the game he had vs. the Celts tonite!  

I advocated offering him the vet minimum – couldn’t see what we had to lose. (And isn’t that what he signed for?) But I figured that the medical crew got an up close and personal look and decided it wasn’t a good idea.

Guess they were wrong.

Still, not a huge error. Yeah, I’d rather have him than Mason, and he would have meant us not needing to trade for a backup PG (a role he totally could have handled off the bench with TDDWTDD). But not a huge mistake.

I laughed for like five minutes. Man, that’s some funny stuff.

Hinrich would be nice as a backup. Honestly, barring ‘Melo coming for scraps, that’s what I would do – trade our expirings for Diaw and Hinrich (who also expires in 2012) and resign Chandler over the summer along with an MLE player. We’d have plenty of expiring contracts to use in a deadline deal in 11/12 that would hopefully put us into contention.