MIAMI—The Miami Heat are admitting something here. Conceding something. It requires that ego and pride be set aside by both the builder, Pat Riley, and the foreman, Erik Spoelstra. It is a bit humbling for this franchise, but also smart, and necessary.
The Big Three is not enough. That is what this means. It may have been increasingly apparent, but this is Miami saying it to the rest of the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the first time.
“We need help” is what you mean when you are this eager—eager being a nice word for desperate—to sign a veteran, free agent point guard like Mike Bibby at a point on the NBA calendar when you hoped your team’s championship muscle and mettle would have been displayed for all, impervious to doubts and in no need of embellishment.
“He’s going to help us out tremendously,” LeBron James said on Tuesday.
The Heat made it official on Wednesday when they announced the signing of the free agent.
“We want to welcome Mike Bibby as we continue to move into the direction of our championship dreams,” Heat president Pat Riley said. “We feel Mike, with his vast postseason experience, long-range game and point guard abilities, will give us a boost in the backcourt.”
The Heat waived Carlos Arroyo to make room for Bibby, who was bought out of his contract with the Washington Wizards. With 80 postseason starts, he is more seasoned than Heat starter Mario Chalmers. While Bibby may not start immediately, he is expected to fulfill that role in time.
The Big Three were supposed to be enough, remember? That was from the minute the club audaciously staged that summer celebration that filled the arena and looked and sounded for all the world like a preview-coronation of the championships sure to come.
The rest of the roster? Those were minor details, right? Call the rotation LeBron, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and The Seven Dwarfs and you’d be fine.
There were always reasons, until now, until Bibby, to think things would work out. Or at least to think the team thought that.
After the 9-8 start, while the national basketball media wrung hands and wailed, the Heat calmly figured it was just a matter of time and cohesion.
Hiccups along the way (defined as most any loss; how dare they!?) might be blamed on Mike Miller’s absence and then arduous recovery of his game, or on Udonis Haslem’s serious injury-absence reiterating his value.
It wasn’t a secret that Miami was as weak at point guard and center as it was strong at the other three starting spots. Rather, it was a prideful belief (verified by no deals made prior to the trade deadline) that the Big Three were enough to overcome anything, from Miami’s own lopsided roster and weak bench to any and all opponents.
Well, it’s March now, and we know better. More important, the Heat evidently knows better.
Deep into the season, the 12-15 mark against teams with winning records is sobering to champagne dreams, and too foreboding to ignore as the playoffs draw near. So, too, does the 5-11 record in close games (decided by five points or less) verify that whatever is missing hasn’t been found.
Sixty games in, you know what you have. Know who you are. Know that no mere tweaking by Spoelstra will be enough.
The Heat has learned it is good enough, as is, to be very good, to be a high playoff seed, to almost certainly win a first-round playoff series on auto-pilot.
The Heat also has learned that isn’t good enough, as is, when the ring is the thing, when the roadblocks include the Celtics and Bulls (first) and then the Lakers, Mavericks and Spurs.
The latest teachers of that humbling lesson have been the Celtics, Bulls and, here Sunday on prime-time television, the Knicks.
So the desperate Heat rightly salivated as Bibby and veteran power forward Troy Murphy became suddenly available this week after engineering buyouts with Washington and Golden State, respectively.
Murphy would have been a nice stopgap until Haslem’s return in a month or so, but on Tuesday Murphy chose the Celtics over the Heat—only magnifying Miami’s imperative to win Bibby’s services at a position of even greater need.
Murphy’s decision was telling. Nobody is dreaming of a championship ring quite like this guy. No active player has appeared in more games (639) without ever appearing the playoffs. He took his best shot at a ring and decided that was Boston.
And it might be, still.
But that’s less so now that the Heat finally has, in the 32-year-old Bibby, a quality, trustworthy point guard who knows the position intimately and expertly.
Carlos Arroyo plainly wasn’t good enough, which is why he lost his starting job this season and is now looking for work, a casualty of Bibby’s arrival.
Mario Chalmers, who took over as the starter, might be good enough someday, if you apply the hopeful, Chad Henne-esque belief that he’ll grow and get better. Right now, though, he was a weak link begging an upgrade.
Bibby is that, even on the far side of his prime. He is a 15.4-point career scorer who can shoot from outside the three-point arc and could provide the fourth scoring option Miami has lacked.
Bibby might not be as great on the defensive end, but he brings what is missing, a savvy, experienced court general up to playing the point, including late in games, so that James can stay where he is comfortable.
Bibby gave up $6.2 million in salary next year to get out of Washington. Can you blame him? He comes to stake his claim to a championship. He also comes to a ready-made family, considering new teammate Eddie House happens to be his brother-in-law, and considering how embraced he’ll be by a team that knows how valuable he’ll be.
This past summer, with spotlights and fireworks, getting LeBron and Bosh made the Heat catapult from just-OK to contenders
This week, quietly, adding Bibby could be that needed little nudge for the Heat to inch from contenders to champions.
