Sports

The next week of Miami Heat basketball is important, which is miraculous considering where the team sat in the standings three months ago. The Heat is desperately trying to make the playoffs after starting the season 11-30. For exactly half a season, the Heat was the second-worst team in the NBA.

Here is what you need to know about a team that has the ceiling of average and the floor of, well, Marlins.

It’s been almost three years since LeBron James last bounced a basketball for the Heat, but constant reminders remain of his four-season tour in Miami. No, we’re not talking about your dad and his Tourette’s-like stream of profanity that flares up every time he sees LeBron on TV. We’re talking about the No. 6 Heat jerseys that still litter the South Florida landscape.

The Miami Dolphins should be the team that makes a phone call to Kaepernick. They should sign him and make him their backup quarterback. The decision really shouldn’t even be all that difficult.

Though Heat fans are incredibly unique and difficult to predict, we can still categorize them. Here are the five most common types found in Heat Nation.

Miami Heat fans were devastated when Dwyane Wade left for Chicago, but after the Heat’s miraculous turnaround season, would they even take him back in 2018?

Miami Heat fans love Dion Waiters. One could say Heat fans have fallen in love with him. These are the seven reasons why.

When Wade left, Heat fans didn’t burn his jersey; they stood in lines for hours to buy more of them. And Wade? He misses the shit out of Miami even if he doesn’t openly say it. In subtle ways, he’s made that much abundantly clear. We’ve been keeping track, and here just a few of the cries for help Wade has sent out.

The Heat has certainly got some bang for its buck in many players this season. Here’s a look at them.

Here’s a tough question: Who’s the most recognizable face of South Florida sports today? For decades, that was an easy answer. First, it was Dan Marino. Then, even through the LeBron era, it was Dwyane Wade. These days, however, there’s no clear choice for the big dog of South Florida sports.

The Miami Heat has played 56 of its 82 regular-season games, but for some reason, the NBA All-Star break this weekend still feels like the midpoint of the season. Maybe that’s because Heat fans are so used to playoff basketball stretching into May and June.

Miami’s seemingly never-ending saga of Jeffrey Loria, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb might finally be coming to a close. Loria owns the Miami Marlins, a taxpayer-funded rich-person welfare program that occasionally hosts baseball games. After buying the team in 2003 for roughly $150 million, the sports-team equivalent of cereal box tops…

Jeffrey Loria’s endgame has always been obvious. Loria has spent two decades constructing an elaborate baseball Ponzi scheme, starting in ’99, when he dropped just $12 million for a stake in the Montreal Expos and culminating in 2011 when he wrangled a new Miami Marlins stadium paid for by the taxpayers of Miami-Dade County to the tune of $2.4 billion.

The Miami Heat used to be really, really bad. Way back in January 2017, the Heat was a putrid basketball team that had lost 30 of 41 games. People wanted Miami to start tanking. They said the Heat should trade Hassan Whiteside for Carmelo Anthony. They threw dirt on the season before it was confirmed dead.

It’s February, and — sorry! — South Florida sports kinda suck. The Marlins are months from returning and will probably be bad when they do. The Heat is driving its tank in the wrong direction. The Panthers aren’t anything to write home about. And football is finally leaving us for good following this weekend’s Super Bowl.