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Chapter 1: What is the history of the Miami Heat and its recent challenges?
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Billy, it felt like you were accusing Zaslow of being a frontrunner on his Heat stuff. But Mike Ryan has basically been saying, I've checked out on basketball for two years. The moment that I saw the Heat weren't going to be any good anymore. Mike Ryan has just checked out on all basketball because for 13 years he got to ride the highest highs. And then he said, I don't want to ride this anymore.
I just disagreed with all their moves.
They get rid of Kyle Lowry, which I hated, and they brought in Terry Rozier. It's like a slap in the face to me. I've just hated their approach. I hated that they allowed everybody in the Eastern Conference that they were chasing that Eastern Conference banner with to get better while they lost, sometimes directly head-to-head and trying to acquire talent. It's been terrible.
They're all about culture. They're all about trying hard. And yet their stars don't play half the season. They do all the same shit that everybody else does. And they've been living off of a reputation. Trust me, like making that run in the bubble, making that run as an eighth seed from the plan on down.
That's incredible outlier stuff that probably worked against the best interests of a franchise that wasn't that good to begin with.
Man, that Dame trade really didn't work out for anybody, huh? Because the Heat have ended up where they are, and Milwaukee is equally in bad footing.
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Chapter 2: How did the Damian Lillard trade impact the Miami Heat and other NBA teams?
Yeah, it worked out great for Boston.
Yeah, they cleaned up the scraps of that trade. I just mean the Damian Lillard part of it. Look, all you have is a result, and you could say, well, I guess Miami Heat dodged one. Oh, no, I'm not saying that. I don't think we'd ever really know how that would have gone with Dame, the fit, his health.
He had a lot of stuff going on in his life that hasn't been super reported on around the same time that he was told by the franchise he always loved and did the right thing by. We're not going to actually send you to the place that you want to go. We're going to make an example out of you and have the ringer do our bidding for us.
It's just a shame for him, for the Heat, for the Bucs, for everybody. And you look at all these teams that in the last five or six years were in the finals. You look at Phoenix. You look at Milwaukee. You look at even Denver, who's battling now. The Heat, all these teams that had these stars that you thought, oh, you can continue to build around some of those guys in their prime, let alone.
And now they're all sort of floundering. Even for that matter, Golden State, the only reason they're there is because they took the star from one of the other teams. And that's the only reason they're still relevant.
They're quite back, baby. By the way, I'm not hating on the ringer. I think what the ringer did, obviously by their pro Celtics personalities, was a masterstroke. It's why they have a banner. They reacted to that Lillard to Heath thing so out of proportion that it was such an outsized reaction that it really beat the market, it established a narrative, and it got a lot of buy-in.
Hey, this team that just made it to the finals as an 8th seed? We can't let them have an actual good player.
This is one of the things that has happened here on a day meant to laugh at the Miami Heat. We were defeated by the ringer. It wasn't that long ago I was going to hang a Bill Simmons banner in here with Udonis Haslam of his face in Game 7, and Zazzle has just eaten all of your words, Mike, without rebuttal. I'm watching on television. They're saying get rid of Pat Riley.
I haven't seen that on television before. That's not something in my lifetime, that's not something I have ever seen on television before.
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Chapter 3: What role did hubris play in the Miami Heat's recent team decisions?
hubris involved there and it backfired that to me is a key word because I think their last two big missteps involved a lot of hubris from Pat Riley sending out that memo backing up the one player you never want to back into a corner and also their whole approach to the Damian Lillard acquisition Tyler Hero take it or leave it using us I'm guilty of it I was a mouthpiece for them I played the game I played the game way worse than the ringer did you believe that's what it was as opposed to Joe Cronin refusing to even engage
Yes, because I think the refusal to even engage was Miami's hubris in approach to it in speaking through this show and saying, it's Tyler here. What are your options? Can you get anything better?
But I mean, I mean, how many times in the league do negotiations for a trade start like that? And then eventually you'll work your way to the real trade.
That was what we talked about at the time. It's not that, hey, this is a good deal. Why isn't Portland doing it? It's the, you won't even engage in conversation. Your star does not want to be there anymore. We're already here. Let's work. Let's at least give me a counter and then we'll work our way. This idea that we're not going to talk. But Mike... I don't know if that's hubris.
The Jimmy Butler, hey, he's fine thing, that absolutely is hubris, which is crazy because you know who else made the same exact mistake? It was Tom Thibodeau in Minnesota where he was just like, no, no, Jimmy's fine. Jimmy told them as soon as their season was over, the last season, hey, not going to pay me, get rid of me. And Tibbs was like, no, no, he's fine. Jimmy's my guy. I understand him.
Just when the season starts, everything will be fine and everything unraveled. And so for them to not learn from that mistake at all and – For them to think that, oh, no, things are different here, even though this guy has demonstrated a specific way of handling that situation, it was a huge misstep.
To me, the Lillard thing is just like what I was talking about earlier in the show with you, which is, yo, man, sometimes people just don't want to do a deal.
That's not Pat Riley's fault. The four teams involved in that Lillard pursuit, Portland, Milwaukee, Boston, Miami, all the GMs got extended. that were involved in that deal. Milwaukee's GM somehow got extended. Portland's GM got extended. The Boston Celtics are NBA champs right now.
Miami's approach, they failed, and it ended up strengthening, at the time, Milwaukee, but Lillard just hasn't worked out for them, and made Boston into a champion. We failed, guys. We failed. The plan didn't work and it made everybody else stronger. It was a disaster that some saw two years ago and we wasted two years. We just wasted two years with arguably the greatest head coach in NBA history.
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Chapter 4: Why was trading Jimmy Butler considered a wake-up call for the Heat?
Or two finals appearances in five years is not failure.
You made Milwaukee and Boston better. They didn't want to deal with you, and it feels like they screwed you over and said, and F.
you drew holidays going to boston like it was just such a disaster that's not miami no did that no but miami had a hand in it and i do think that the hubris thing is real having lived through it and haven't spoken to it and i remember the tone of tyler hero take it or leave it try to find something better no i i get it um what i'm saying to you is that's negotiations and ultimately they don't trade a guy to seven different teams they trade on one team and so everyone else is
inherently a quote-unquote loser, but that's not the same as making a mistake. Now, if you want to do, hey, Kyle Lowry trading Dragic and Precious Achua to not only trade for Kyle Lowry, but to overpay him, that's a misstep. To say, hey, instead of just eating the Kyle Lowry contract, trading for Terry Rozier and having another year of that, those are missteps to me.
And obviously the Jimmy Butler thing we just talked about. But when you say, oh, I thought you were supposed to get Kevin Durant, but you didn't. Like, yeah, man, I'm It's not a unilateral thing. Someone else is working on this.
That's why I didn't invoke that, even though I have my problems with that. I'm sure that's been the one that's eluded Pat his entire time down here. But yeah, Kyle Lowry, they made it to the finals in spite of that. But they've made some very bad moves here while developing some guys into big-time players and contracts.
Guys have had nice careers in the NBA because of the development down here in Miami. But they've made mistakes.
I think the mistakes you're talking about are marginal. The real ones are marginal mistakes. Mistakes, yes, but marginal mistakes.
You're trying to acquire a player, not getting him is not a mistake.
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Chapter 5: How has the Heat’s 'championship culture' influenced fan expectations?
Like these are mistakes.
That's the job, bro. No, no, no. But Dan, it's like saying Ted Williams was a failure because 60 percent of the time he didn't get it on base.
This is how he and Heat fans have been influenced by the last 15 years. That ends with, hey, I'm out. If you're not championship good in two years, I don't even care about basketball. But wait a minute.
When you talk about what's happened down here in 15 years of spoiling is, yeah, Miami gets all the guys. Miami's used to getting all the guys. And for many years, they don't get the guys. They got Jimmy Butler. I don't know how they did that. It still confuses me. They didn't have any money and they had Dion Waiters and Hassan Whiteside. I still don't understand how that happened.
By the way, they got all the guys. They've got four guys.
No, but at the start of Heat fans being obnoxious starts with a stage and they got all the guys.
The Heat are just victims of their own mythology that they created, right? Which is championship culture. We're always in it. Banners. And we always get the guy. The Godfather closes all the deals, right? And then when he doesn't close the deals, it's like, well, that's the job. You don't always get everyone that you want.
It's like, but you've been telling me for 20 years now, we do get everyone that we want. And you got the big guys. Who's big?
I'm telling you that you get everyone. They just got some good players, so now we're expecting that.
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Chapter 6: What are the fans' reactions to the Heat's season and team direction?
Every one of you created this culture of delusion down here. Ellisburg's just in the corner cranking that hog to culture.
I'm one of the anchors. No. It was me.
No one's cranking their hog. And you know what?
I sang a sad pepus, and I apologized to the audience because I was being used. And it took the hubris that they approached that Damian Lillard thing and the failure of that for me to realize this is a systemic issue. You shouldn't apologize, Mike. You were a victim there.
It's victim blaming. So what's going to happen, though? Okay, what's going to happen? Maybe it even takes a couple of years. A couple years until they're good again. How many years do I have left? Are you back as a fan then in a couple years until they're good again?
I like the heat. What happened?
What did he say?
He killed Pat Riley. No, I didn't. You said how many years does he have left?
Amin's leaving. I asked a question on Earth. You've made Amin leave.
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Chapter 7: How do the hosts reflect on their fandom and loyalty to basketball teams?
Not stepping down.
For the final step down, yeah. It was either Pat is dangerously ill or... he's no longer with us.
No, we started, yeah, because we started thinking like, oh my gosh, they named the court after him, the Lakers making a statue after him, like something's going on and all of a sudden everyone's honoring him out of the blue and now Dan is like very sad here and then boom, ice cream. And we're like, whoa, okay, well,
It's on the television, get Pat Riley out. And I want to object to only one thing that was said in the last, I don't know, 10 minutes, which is that Zaslow, again, is saying what the Heat are guilty of and what the Ubris is. And he said that already on the starting lineup this morning with Frank Isola and Brian Scalabrini said the same thing word for word. Like the words were the same.
So I'm supposed to assume that your entire audience... is the same as the audience from Starting Line Up. I just don't want your recycled shit. We're hiring you for good stuff. It's my thought.
Yeah, I mean, Billy Joel doesn't come out and play new songs at his concert. It's my opinion. Piano Man, that's what he does. Billy Joel, you want the hits. Pearl Jam does whatever it wants.
I can't believe Dan listened to that interview this morning.
That to me is the shocking thing, is that Dan's just like mainlining Starting Line Up. It's a good show. I'm going to tell you right now.
It's a great show. Anytime Dan Levitard is in his car, he listens to NBA radio.
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Chapter 8: What are the sentiments about American patriotism and dual citizenship among the hosts?
I know. I get random texts. I hear Amin on a lot also. I get a lot of screenshot texts. It's always in the car.
Amin and Jason Jackson are getting it done on your Sunday mornings.
Jason Jackson. Jason Jackson, if you're nasty.
I understand Zazz coming at me for being a bad fan. I'm still a Heat fan. I just don't want to be triggered.
It's kind of garbage. In a couple years, if the Heat are good again, you're going to be all in again. It's like, come on, man.
I'll be in again. I'm not watching them. You're wearing a Panthers jersey today. They're behind a paywall, I said, flatly. You abandoned this team as soon as it got eliminated.
I'm supporting the only one of our teams that is still actively playing games.
Support the team that brought you here. Dance with the one you brought. That's the one that brung you. The Miami Heat acquired my least favorite player of all time, and then they put their games behind a paywall, and I didn't feel like rewarding them by accepting the paywall with the product that they were putting out there.
You've had this attitude for several years, man.
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