MIAMI – For a moment, basketball moved to the background, something particularly difficult to do amid a 10-game losing streak.
Instead, when Miami Heat President Pat Riley spoke Saturday at Kaseya Center, it only was about the $321,900 raised by the team’s annual Family Festival, the event that allowed Riley and his team to take a few hours away from the struggle that continues.
Still, Riley did acknowledge the tough times.
“In spite of the cynicism at times in sports, in general, that whole family context is real,” he said of the event benefiting the Miami Heat Charitable Fund. “It goes through adversity, it goes through the great times we celebrate. We see people come and go, we see players grow, we see children grow up, we see grandchildren come in. But that’s what we really firmly believe in. We’re part of this and we have been for a long time, and I’m proud of it. We have that here.
“Just because we’re having a little tough stretch right now, it doesn’t mean it’s still not that.”
To center Bam Adebayo, right relief and right time.
“I feel like everybody is due for a light day,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of down days consistently, so one of these days just for us to not think basketball, bring our families out, let the community be a part of it.”
But Sunday, when the Heat return to Kaseya Center for the third game of this five-game homestand, the harsh realities will remain when they take the court against the Charlotte Hornets.
– With one more loss, the Heat will match the fifth-longest losing streak in the franchise’s 37 seasons, with the overall record at 17 – the franchise’s first 17 games in 1988.
– Up 11 at one point in Friday night’s 102-98 loss to the Houston Rockets, the Heat now have blown a league-high 20 double-digit leads in losses. Next on the list are the tanking Utah Jazz, with 18 such losses.
– Ahead early in the fourth quarter against the Rockets, Heat blew a fourth-quarter lead for the 18th time in a loss this season, tied for the NBA’s worst such record with the Jazz and tanking Brooklyn Nets.
– At 29-41, the Heat stand 3 1/2 games behind the Orlando Magic for No. 8 in the East, the final play-in spot that does not require a 2-0 play-in record to advance to the playoffs. With the Magic also holding that tiebreaker, it means if the Magic close 5-6 over their final 11 games, the Heat would have to go 10-2 to pass them, with the Heat still with remaining games against the Boston Celtics, Memphis Grizzlies and Milwaukee Bucks.
So even as Heat players and staffers spent time with family in the sunshine at the team’s charity carnival, the reality remains one of stuck in the mud, even now, with three weeks left in their season, an overwhelming likelihood of having to defeat the Chicago Bulls in a play-in opener and then win at the loser of Magic-Atlanta Hawks just to earn the right to face the No. 1-seed Cleveland Cavaliers in the opening round of the playoffs.
Still, at a time when the franchise might be better suited for a dip into the lottery, talk continues about fighting the good fight.
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“We got 12 games left in the regular season. You can’t let go of the rope now,” Adebayo said. “To me, I just think why quit? That’s unreasonable. To me, that’s something that’s in your character to be a quitter.
“And, obviously, I’m not no quitter, so I’m not going to let my teammates quit. And we’ll go from there.”
As it is, amid this slide almost totally out of the playoff picture, the Heat lost less than two weeks ago to the Hornets at Kaseya Center.
In that loss to the Hornets the Heat led by 17 points at one stage and were up 11 with 6:47 to play. That to a team currently with the NBA’s third-worst record.
So, yes, a common theme.
“If you’re winning for the first three quarters, you’ve got what it takes to win the whole game,” forward Andrew Wiggins said. “We’ve just got to put a whole game together and we’ll be alright.”
So what will it take to end this streak of misery?
“It can be just one win. It can be an inspiring moment in a game,” Wiggins said. “You can find what else might work. I feel like we’re playing the right way. I feel like everyone’s in good spirits, mentally, physically. The losing part sucks.”
