Heat, without Herro, Jaquez, and Mitchell defeat OKC. I guess coaching matters and Heat Culture is a thing. There’s still time to right the ship, so I’m not ready to say its getting late early.

There have been a lot of injuries and inconstancy. This team needs to find its chemistry again.

We can argue coach vs KAT vs fit til we’re blue in the face (I’m becoming of the mind that all three should be addressed), but it’s becoming pretty clear it’s definitely something and we’re inching closer to a point where the front office has to take action.

Problem is Leon convinced Dolan that he had put together a championship team to get a $30M buyout of Thibs, and I can’t imagine our beloved blues singer is going to be magnanimous about that.

My Sunday morning thought.

If KAT is untradeable right now then we need to make multiple smaller moves to fix the bench and surround Brunson and KAT with as many plus defenders as possible.

You keep these guys: Brunson, KAT, Hart, OG, Mikal, Deuce, Hart, Mitch and Shamet.

Clarkson and Yabu need to go. Dadiet, Kolek, Huk, McCullar, Diawara are all expendable if you must include them to upgrade the bench.

Get Alvarado from pelicans to be a true back up PG who is also a plus defenders. Get another 4/5 who is also a plus defender sincer w don’t have Mitch every game and he is only best if he plays like 25 minutes tops.

Offense is not really the problem. We need defense and while schemes and coaching matter, personnel matter more. If we’re going to have Brunson and KAT as our main guys we can’t have negative defenders like Yabu and Clarkson playing at all.

Would this fox everything? I don’t know and I would not want to give up picks to make this happen beyond maybe one second rounder.

Side note: I had a random basketball conversation with a young woman who is connected to NBA people; when KAT came up and I mentioned he has been playing terrible lately she said “oh he just got engaged to Jordyn Woods on Christmas he probably can’t concentrate on anything right now.”

Defense is def a problem but they scores 99 points at home last night. Even down two starters they have more firepower than that. The guys aren’t clicking right now. Still time to get it right and like you said, it’s playoffs that count. But they need to get act together.

They definitely aren’t clicking but maybe bringing in some tough minded defenders would help. Offense comes and goes but if you have decent defense it will keep you in games when things aren’t clicking and gives you confidence to turn the offense around.

Side note: I had a random basketball conversation with a young woman who is connected to NBA people; when KAT came up and I mentioned he has been playing terrible lately she said “oh he just got engaged to Jordyn Woods on Christmas he probably can’t concentrate on anything right now.”

So in about 18 months, he should be playing with some serious, misplaced aggression.