The moniker “Dream Team” is usually reserved for the group of NBA players who join forces every four years to guarantee Olympic gold in basketball for the United States. Therefore, it’s an indication of their arrogance and disrespect for what this moniker represents that Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, and LeBron James co-opted it when they joined forces last year to guarantee an NBA championship for the Miami Heat.
Evidently, they presumed that, because they were three of the best players on the 2008 Olympic team that won gold, they would be able to dominate other teams in the NBA the way they dominated teams from other countries at the Olympics. No doubt, in their egocentric enthusiasm, it did not occur to them that all of the other teams in the NBA would be comprised of players of their calibre, unlike the second-rate players they faced at the Olympics.
By the same token, Dwayne, Chris, and LeBron hyped their coming together in Miami to such degree that devoted Heat fans were inspired to hail them as the holy trinity of the NBA. Well, that was then.
Because, even though they have played at times like a dream team, they’re on course to end this season in a failure so shocking that it really would be tantamount to the United States losing in basketball at the Olympics, which it did quite shockingly in 1988 and 2004.
It’s bad enough that El Heat can’t buy a win against the top 5 teams this season. But nothing telegraphed this nightmare scenario unfolding quite like its 87-86 loss to the Chicago Bulls yesterday. And it is particularly noteworthy that no player on this Bulls team was deemed good enough to play with Dwayne, Chris, and LeBron on the dream team at the last Olympics.
More telling, though, was the embarrassing post-game show, which featured the dumbfounded coach of the Heat trying in vain to explain why his superstars were playing more like a dream team from the UK than one from the US. Furthermore, it could only have exacerbated their shattered confidence when he revealed that he had just left them in the locker room crying like babies over this loss, which put the Heat on a very cold, four-game losing streak.
By the way, apropos the role self-confidence plays in sports, these struggling Heat players need only look at how his shattered confidence has put the once-dominant Tiger Woods on a truly shocking one-year losing streak. Talk about not being able to buy a win…. When Tiger, when?! But I digress….
I warned Heat fans (especially the rabid ones in my family) that fragile egos and grandiose expectations might make it impossible for LeBron and Dwayne, the putative team leader, to develop the chemistry necessary to win an NBA championship:
[N]o matter how many championships he wins in Miami, he will be forever haunted by the fact that he abandoned not just his team but also his childhood home to do so. Then, of course, there’s the inevitable conflict that will arise when some sports writers and commentators begin referring to the Heat as LeBron’s team while others continue referring to it as D-Wade’s…
But God help him if the Heat does not win the NBA championship next year. Because failing to do so will turn his new “dream team” into a living nightmare.
(LeBron abandons Cleveland for Miami, The iPINIONS Journal, July 13, 2010)
Of course, it ain’t over till it’s over. So hope springs eternal that the Heat’s marquee players will finally play up to their self-propelled hype.
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