From the injuries to playing in their second-straight play-in, the 2023-24 season wasn’t the most fruitful for the Miami Heat. Their fate was met rather quickly last postseason, getting trounced in five games by the top-seeded and eventual-champion Boston Celtics, 11 months after the Heat bested them in the Eastern Conference Finals.
The Heat didn’t make many swift personnel changes this offseason. They re-signed Kevin Love, Thomas Bryant and scrambled to re-sign Haywood Highsmith after losing Caleb Martin to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Regardless of how much the roster changed, the end goal didn’t.
To be the best, you have to beat the best. The Boston Celtics were far-and-away the best team in the NBA last year. And Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra revealed earlier this week during Media Day that watching Boston win their first NBA Title since 2007-08 introduced extra motivation this offseason.
“Losing to Boston and seeing them win, that offers a little bit of different motivation in the offseason,” Spoelstra told Brendan Tobin on the Tobin & Leroy Show Monday. “I think we were all able to get time away, and understand that we’re going to have to come together and get to a higher level. That’s what happens when a team wins a championship. They force you to raise your level, and that’s what we’re looking forward to out of our group.”
During his last postgame press conference after the Heat lost Game 5, Spoelstra joked that he would “not watch one minute” of the rest of their games. He committed to his word in the moment, but admitted he re-watched it after.
“I didn’t watch any of (Boston’s championship run) live,” he said. “But this summer, you have to get to work. I just was not going to watch it as it was happening. I certainly didn’t watch the coronation–any of that. I did not see that part to see their parade as motivation. But to get to school, you have to understand what the enemy is doing and how they adapted and got to a higher level. That’s what’s going to be required for our ball club.”
While they did face a compromised Heat, Cavaliers and Pacers–all of whom were missing their best player for a portion of the series–the Celtics went 12-2 against the East in the postseason with a plus-11.0 NET Rating across those 14 games. They dominated outside of a handful of games–point blank.
Injury luck is apart of the race. Each year, the teams who either won or made the NBA Title had positive injury luck at some point along the way.
The Heat is 2-2 in series against Boston in the postseason over the last five seasons. Spoelstra is the best coach in the NBA with myriad tricks up his sleeve that he’ll extract in any given series when it matters the most. Should this group square off against Boston in the postseason again–hopefully healthy (even though they’re never fully healthy)–it will be interesting to see how Spoelstra adapts.
