National Basketball Association

Heat served harsh reminder in OKC

Published Mar. 25, 2012 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

If last season wasn’t enough of a lesson to the Miami Heat and their legion of true believers, let Sunday’s 103-87 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder serve as a reminder:

This is sports. Nothing is inevitable. No champion is crowned, and none is denied, until the thing is actually won or lost.

Last season Miami stalked through a season as prematurely crowned champions and paid a price. There was the championship celebration before the first game, the arrogance, the fear, the losing streaks and the winning streaks, the drama and the South Beach denial, and finally, the Finals collapse against Dallas.

This season certainly has been more tempered. But still a premature coronation came in February, from many of the same voices saying LeBron & Co. could not lose in 2011, and that toll, too, has been heavy enough that Miami must remember last season if the Heat are not to repeat it.

First came the sense of inevitability, a streak of play so incredible that the narrative on this season reverted to the same one that ushered in the season before: a team that could not be beaten led by a star too good to be foiled.

Fueling this, Miami won nine straight games by 12 or more points. They won 17 of 19 games during a streak that engulfed all of February. LeBron James was unrolling perhaps his finest season ever, gracefully and powerfully propelling himself toward a certain MVP award and NBA Finals redemption.

It was something to behold. It was hard to see who might beat them.

Just like last year.

Boston? Too old. Chicago? Not equipped properly. Orlando? Not deep enough. The Lakers? Past their prime. New York? A phenomenon Miami helped squash in humiliating fashion.

And Oklahoma City?

Too young, not ready, still in need of seasoning and facing the same star-crossed chemistry issues The Big Three faced last year, still with a duo of young stars not ready to take the mantle of the game’s best from LeBron, Wade and Bosh.

Except this is sports, which means absolutely nothing is certain. It’s a fact clear as day and easy to forget in the face of so much winning, so much talent, so much hype.

Not that there aren’t signs everywhere.

On Sunday, Tiger Woods won his first PGA event in almost a thousand days and North Carolina failed to advance to the Final Four as a No. 1 seed because it failed to score in the final 3:58 of the game.

Warning signs, both: Anything can happen.

The Miami-OKC game was billed as two inevitable conference champions facing off. The Heat had won four straight, but there were recent road losses against the Jazz, Lakers, Bulls and Magic, and Miami’s propensity for winning by wide margins had melted away. The Thunder were coming off a 149-point night, but there was a string of recent home losses.

Anything could happen.

But from the start, the Thunder played at a higher speed on the way to dismantling Miami. Kevin Durant made his claim for MVP, dropping 28 points, dishing out a season-high eight assists and pulling down nine rebounds.

Serge Ibaka, with 19 points and 10 rebounds, and Kendrick Perkins, with 16 points and six rebounds, simply pushed the Heat around. All game the Thunder were faster, more of a team than a cluster of talent, and in sync from start to finish.

Whereas the Heat turned the ball over, the Thunder shared with the ease and comfort of a unit finding its sense of cohesion, finishing with 26 assists to the Heat’s 17.

“It gives everyone confidence and we do well moving the ball,” Durant said. “Once we move the ball, it shifts the defense and then we are able to get good shots. We have been working it all year, it was tough for us in the beginning, but now it is starting to come around for us.”

Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra noticed it, too.

“They kicked our butts,” he said. “We know it. We’ll own it.”

Yes, they did kick their butts, and mixed in the loss were seeds of the same struggles that cost the Heat a championship last year. Chris Bosh played soft for much of the game, finishing with just five rebounds and five turnovers. The Heat, mimicking last season’s tendency for self-destruct mode, had 21 turnovers that led to 28 points.

“We started the game with a turnover,” said LeBron, who had 17 points and seven assists but scored just four points in the final quarter. “From there on, we turned the ball over.”

And Dwyane Wade, who brought his team back into the game with a trio of threes in the third quarter and had a team-high 22 points, didn’t take a single shot in the fourth. Not a single shot.

Which brings us to the strongest reminders of the Heat’s deepest problems last season: LeBron and Wade trying to learn to successfully coexist under the pressure of playing against another top-notch team, and the accompanying tendency to cast blame, by what is or is not said.

Asked whether he’d have liked to have had the ball in his hands in the fourth quarter, Wade got surly and snapped: “I don’t want to talk about the offense.”

Well, that’s too bad, because the offense is a big part of how Miami does or does not win — now, and once the playoffs arrive. And being angry at this stage over the game plan is not a great sign, even if Wade is absolutely right to be frustrated. Wade again had the hot hand, and again Spoelstra quit going to him. It was another reminder of problems from last year.

None of this is to say Miami can’t win it all. It is to say that the Heat are in many ways the same team they were last season: exceptional, dangerous, united, likely to bring out the best in their opponents, and, from time to time, susceptible to playing more like a team ordained to greatness than one hungry to earn it every single day.

Sunday’s loss to Oklahoma City was just one game. No doubt. It is not a verdict on an entire season or an indictment on what they have done or will do.

But to ensure it stays that way, to make this one game more anomaly than analogy, Miami should take careful note of exactly what went wrong.

Starting with remembering that in sports anything can happen — and, if you’re not careful, history certainly can repeat itself.

You can follow Bill Reiter on Twitter or email him at foxsportsreiter@gmail.com.