Ira Winderman: Heat’s ‘irrational thinking’ needs to turn into cogent blueprint (2025)

MIAMI — There was a time and a place for what Erik Spoelstra referred to as “irrational thinking,” the notion that a 37-45 record and 10th-place finish could actually lead to something tangible in the playoffs.

For two weeks against the Cleveland Cavaliers, that was all the Miami Heat had to grasp hold of against a team that had the Heat as overmatched as in any of the playoff series in the franchise’s 37 seasons, including those against Michael Jordan and his championship Chicago Bulls.

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It is what Spoelstra does best as coach, create a buy-in to rally around the unfathomable, such conviction spurring his team to improbable appearances in the 2020 and ’23 NBA Finals.

But sometimes that irrational is just that, as the back-to-back franchise–record losses in the final two games against the Cavaliers showed.

To that degree, the two season-ending losses were as meaningful as the two play-in victories that advanced the Heat to the playoffs.

After the victories over the Chicago Bulls and Atlanta Hawks, the thought was perhaps this team could stand as a playoff threat.

After the home losses to the Cavaliers, the reality hit home that change is necessary.

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“As an organization, yeah, we’re going to look at this and say this is unacceptable,” Spoelstra said. “We got to get to another level.”

So, finally, with the finality of Monday night’s capitulation, comes rational thinking.

Not good enough.

Mediocre before the Jimmy Butler trade.

Worse after.

Now the question is what course to take. No more attempting to have it both ways, with both youth and experience.

As he spoke solemnly yet hopefully late Monday night, Spoelstra spoke of that imbalance.

“There’s no way to fast track it unless you go through it, and sometimes there’s pain from that,” he said of this team’s youth that clearly wasn’t up to this high-octane playoff moment. “I said it with a couple of young guys, we needed the 25-year-old version now. Can’t do that, obviously. You’ve got to go through the experiences to get that.”

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So Kel’el Ware was benched less than three minutes into the Game 4 rout, at 21 nowhere close to the challenge of Jarrett Allen. So Nikola Jovic unlocked his game only during garbage time, at 21 promising but recklessly raw. So Jaime Jaquez Jr., a rookie wonder a year ago, did not enter for the first time Monday night until the Heat were down 46.

At one point during the season, when hope, legitimate hope still existed, the dichotomy of young and old was seen as a bridge between relevance and the future. Within that mix, though, was concern about the luxury tax, tax aprons and future draft picks due elsewhere.

It was the thinnest of needles to thread.

Listen enough to Butler, and it was among the reasons his joy was lost, joy he pointed out hours after the Heat’s Monday night mauling that now has been recaptured with the playoff success of the Golden State Warriors.

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The decisions now for the Heat are their own steps to recapture joy.

The fast-track way would be to dangle the most promising of youth, players such as Ware and Jovic, as well as draft capital, for an available asset in the Kevin Durant mold, future be damned.

The patient approach would allow those young players to become the 25-year-olds Spoelstra said he could have used on Monday night, even if it means a few more years or pain for tangible gain.

As the final player of the season into the interview room on Monday night, Bam Adebayo spoke of anticipated overhaul.

“There are going to be a lot of changes this summer,” he said. “Just from my point of view, understanding how the guy with the silver hair works. So just be prepared for that.”

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As in Heat President Pat Riley, whose deal for Butler in 2019 immediately put the Heat on the course for a pair of NBA Finals, and whose trade of Butler in February left the Heat good enough in the postseason to only two beat a pair of play-in opponents with losing records.

For a month now, “irrational thinking” has led to the highest of highs, of a 10th-place team daring to make the playoffs, as well as the lowest of lows, of the worst (by margin of defeat) showing in NBA playoff history.

It is time now for rational thinking to return to the equation. An overhaul is needed. With a singular direction, no matter the direction.

Now or later.

Pick a lane.