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No. 4: Miami Heat
Last Season: 37-45
10th place in East; missed playoffs
Season 1 of the post-LeBron era wasn't quite like Cleveland in 2010-11, but team president Pat Riley would be the last person to call it a success. The Heat pieced together a roster that crumbled during the season and missed the playoffs. With a revamped bench and a healthy Chris Bosh, Riley had no problem this summer setting championship aspirations with the Heat in Season 2 After LeBron. Former Phoenix teammates Amare Stoudemire and Gerald Green have re-united with Goran Dragic at 601 Biscayne Boulevard, and the Heat hope to recreate some of the up-tempo magic of the Mike D'Antoni era.
That will be easier said than done for coach Erik Spoelstra -- especially with overnight sensation Hassan Whiteside also needing touches deep in the paint and Dwyane Wade turning 34. The Heat have lofty goals and a championship pedigree, but the reality reveals a team in search of its own identity. Sure, the starting lineup is formidable, but can the team play elite defense with its one-way additions? Can they play fast if Whiteside and Wade drag along? None of that matters if they can't stay healthy. With this roster, they might never answer those questions.
Where does one begin? We'll start in the summer of 2014. Improvising on the spot once LeBron James stunned the Heat by going back to Cleveland, the Heat nabbed Luol Deng and Josh McRoberts to join the organization's 2014-15 reboot. As it turns out, best-laid plans of mice and men go astray.
After missing training camp and preseason recovering from toe surgery, McRoberts played just 14 games before tearing his meniscus in mid-December. Chris Bosh, unbeknownst to him, played for weeks with a blood clot in his lung and needed to be hospitalized just before the All-Star break, ending his season. Wade missed 20 games and struggled to play with his usual hyper-efficiency and athleticism at age 33.
Entering April with about an 80 percent chance of making the playoffs according to SportsClubStats tracking, the team fell apart and lost six of its final nine games. For just the second time in Wade's NBA career, the Heat missed the playoffs.
It wasn't all bad. There were two major bright spots for the Heat: the addition of Dragic and the arrival of Whiteside. Dragic came in a three-team trade deadline deal that saw the Heat surrender two future first-round draft picks. Dragic came at a steep price, but he represents the team's best point guard since Tim Hardaway.
Signed midseason off the waiver wire, Whiteside finished with 22 double-doubles and the highest point per touch in the NBA. That's partly because he never passed the ball -- he finished with six assists in over 1,000 minutes -- but Whiteside emerged as one of the most productive big men in the league before a freak hand injury derailed his rampage.