Heat's Faults on Display

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">MIAMI ? Read nothing into the game.

Read everything into the season.

There is no great Miami Heat transformation in the offing as the NBA playoffs approach. The Heat ? mightily sensational having Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal, but otherwise mightily flawed ? is what it is, with just two regular-season assignments remaining. Troubled.

Hardly is the Heat hopeless, and neither is it quite yet desperate.

Increasingly, though, Miami appears to be a team lacking versatility. There aren't many escape routes when difficulty presents itself, and the post-season is all about confronting problems and making adjustments, trying to find solutions.

Is the Heat capable of doing that?

Is there anything it can discover about itself that it has failed to reveal through 5 1/2 months of monotonous sameness?

Almost certainly not.

"We don't have time to reinvent the wheel," Miami coach Pat Riley said Sunday afternoon.

And that was before the Heat dropped a 117-93 decision to Chicago at AmericanAirlines Arena.

But that lopsided result can be discounted due to the fact that the Heat ? safely second-seeded in the Eastern Conference ? was resting and disinterested while the Bulls required the victory for playoff qualification.

What shouldn't be discounted, however, was Riley's deeper explanation of circumstance. He said any team's "instincts and mind are geared" to what it knows best at this stage of a season, and attempts to produce significant change in habit, tactic or style are likely to be met with dumbfoundedness.

This, of course, is as good a place as any to get back to that wheel reference. Riley, in fact, did try to reinvent the thing for the Heat between the end of last season and the start of this one, with massive changes to the Wade-O'Neal supporting cast.

Now, though, several of Miami's primary rotation players are hurt (Alonzo Mourning and newcomers Jason Williams and James Posey) or worn out (newcomer Gary Payton).

What the Heat is left with is an uneven Antoine Walker, another of the Riley add-ons, as the best available third option after Wade and O'Neal.

"We can't just expect everything to be right," Walker said after leading the Heat with 22 points in the loss.

But for a very long time, now, that seems to be exactly what the Heat has expected.

Wade: "The playoffs are a different mind-set... a different season."

O'Neal, who didn't speak to the media after the game, did say after practice Saturday afternoon: "We're going to prepare different (for the playoffs)."

That's a dangerous tightrope for any team to walk, and the Heat these days seems especially vulnerable to taking a nasty playoff tumble. There's no telling which first-round opponent will present itself to the Heat from the alphabet soup of lower-rung possibilities, but Miami's trouble defending the perimeter isn't going to disappear regardless of its draw.

Again, the Heat wasn't enthusiastic about the task, but the Bulls' outside triumvirate ? Luol Deng, Ben Gordon and Kirk Hinrich ? combined for 61 points on 23-of-44 shooting.

New Jersey in a second-round pairing, anyone?

The Nets would bring the assorted skills of Jason Kidd, Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson to the open court against the Heat, and that's a better trio than Chicago's.

The truth of the matter is Miami continues to engage in a mix-and-match experiment. What can it reasonably hope to get from anyone beyond Wade and O'Neal?

One guess is a basic time-share arrangement ? perhaps even close to something along the lines of 24 minutes apiece ? at point guard between Williams and Payton, which is almost precisely what it was against the Bulls.

Another guess is Riley trying to choose between Walker's sporadic offense and Posey's overrated defense in dividing playing time at forward.

And yet another guess is the Heat looking for 30-35 minutes from O'Neal at center, and milking whatever it can get from Mourning and Michael Doleac at the position in reserve.

But the fact so many questions remain about the Heat reveal much about its fragile state.</div>

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