National Basketball Association

Enough with the Heat already

Published Nov. 9, 2010 12:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

The NBA season is only a couple of weeks old, and I’m already sick of hearing about the Miami Heat.

Networks and sportswriters can’t get enough of the “Team of Superstars” angle, especially after LeBron James’ nationally televised “The Decision,” announcing on ESPN that he’d be taking his “talents” to Miami to join fellow standouts Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh – the obvious highlight of last summer’s Free-Agency-a-Palooza.

At this point, heat emanating from the Heat has less to do with whether they can adorn James’ finger with a much-coveted championship ring than the media’s unsavory appetite for narratives – a modern ailment that transforms everything, from politics to sports, into the language of reality TV shows, recasting the public arena as one big soap opera starring real people.

Thanks to their new lineup, the Heat instantly became basketball’s equivalent of the Kardashian sisters or the “Jersey Shore” cast: While you might not care about them or even actively dislike them, if you turn on the TV or surf the web it’s almost impossible to avoid them.

By that measure, the Heat is anchored by the ultimate ready-for-primetime players – an assemblage of stars gathered together in the pursuit of a common objective. It’s sort of like the summer movie “The Expendables,” except none of the principals qualifies for retirement benefits.

Remember, too, Heat-mania has thus far competed with the World Series and NFL for the sporting world’s attention. Imagine what happens when the NBA faces fewer distractions come February.

As for the supporting cast in this lunacy, it goes way beyond the journeyman players Miami signed to flesh out their roster.

Mind you, we’re in the nascent stages of an 82-game season, with the Heat – after Saturday’s win against New Jersey – sitting on a record of 5-2 through its first seven games.

That’s perfectly respectable for a reconstituted team still learning to play together, but to some the Heat’s win-loss tally merely provides a moving target to speculate about whether the club will break the regular-season mark of 72-10.

Coach-turned-analyst Jeff Van Gundy got an early jump in the hyperbole sweepstakes, predicting a record-breaking run way back in August. “I just don’t see how they lose games. I think they’re that good,” he said. Fortunately for Van Gundy, who has more than 70 chances to be proved wrong before the playoffs, there’s no penalty in TV punditry for being inaccurate, only for failing to be provocative.

In addition to cable commentators (mostly at networks with a vested stake in the Heat staying hot), enablers and hangers-on include Nike, whose “What should I do?” ad featuring James seems to run about every 45 seconds. Of course, given the millions the shoe marketer has thrown at the former Cleveland star, helping rebuild his sullied image really amounts to little more than protecting its existing investment.

As for the NBA, encouraging the Heat reality show – think “South Beach Shore,” only with inflated egos instead of oversized boobs and exposed abs – is a ploy to stoke interest in the league and perhaps deflect attention from the prospect of a 2011 labor lockout. Besides, with James having made such an ostentatious display of his burning desire for a championship above all else, more than ever the NBA season doesn’t really begin in earnest until the playoffs in April.

Even before the Heat fired their first shots, the NBA scheduled the team for the maximum number of nationally televised games, 29, scattered among ESPN/ABC, TNT and NBA TV. The season-opening salvo against Boston certainly delivered, attracting a best-ever hoops rating for TNT of 7.4 million viewers – and, not incidentally, creating a terrific platform to promote Conan O’Brien’s new late-night show on sister channel TBS.

In that ubiquitous Nike ad, James toys with multiple responses to the “What should I do?” question, some of them pretty clever. But it also serves as a nagging reminder of how selfishly he behaved by dumping his old team on national TV.

For those already eager to turn down the Heat, the real answer to that commercial might be a variation of the title that earned the Dixie Chicks the musical equivalent of an NBA trophy – namely, shut up and win.