Considering the laziness of our MHB staff and the fact that my place of business seems to be in an ever increasing lull, I figured we can cover up to date on what I’ve seen/heard from the Heat to this point in the preseason.
Let’s start with Dorell Wright. Reading mostly from what Ira Winderman has seen as well as personally seeing the Heat play against the Hawks, I don’t think he will be our starting small forward this season. The feeling is that his game compliments Wade’s so they are going to put him on the back-burner until Flash’s return. At the Hawks game, he was jump-shooting and shot-blocking. The latter resulting in him fouling out (he must’ve been hanging with Zo). When he chose to fire up mid-range jumpers instead of slashing to the basket, he was pulled. To get back in the mix he’s either got to develop a jump-shot or return to a high-flier and get to the rim as well as rely more on team defense rather than blocking shots (which is awesome when he does but also gets him into foul trouble).
If this were a RPG, Jason Williams would have the dexterity of negative 100. He walks the ball up court, fires up air-balls, misses layups, and somehow manages to strain, pull, or bruise something every couple of games. I definitely think he would be an excellent candidate for a bionic man experiment. This season I am interested to see that if what the Heat camp has said about J-Will is true ( I posted the comment earlier), that he has gotten back to form from when he was with Memphis. I’m finding that hard to believe this preseason.
Smush Parker came here to give us help at the point. The role I could see him filling is a guard similar to Damon Jones. With Shaq in the middle and Flash on your side you have to improve your filed goal/3 point percentage. If he does fill a role like that he would be a better fit than Donkey was he won’t get posterized on defense ( I was at that game Bron Bron threw down on Damon, it was worse seeing it in person). BTW Damon Jones earned the name Donkey by the way he followed around Shaq like Donkey does Shrek (aside from his Kool-Aid smile).
If I’m correct, this will be the first off-season Shaq has had to rest. Since being in the league he has always advanced deep into the playoffs. Not counting his off court dilemmas ,his wife and him are on the outs, his conditioning for a full season sound like it should be interesting. Adding the ability to have Zo help out with minutes should allow the Big Diesel to roll season long, we can only pray.
Udonis Haslem. Finally some good news. Towards the end of last season Udonis was hurt and it showed. This pre-season he is showing that he’s healthy. That baseline jumpshot he has is there and he’s sinking them without Dwyane on the court, which was unheard of before. Look for UD to improve on his dependable 9 and 9 a game.
I was disappointed the other day when Pat Riley had called out Antoine Walker in the media. If you listen to the LeBatard show, I had re-written Limited-Fake-Pavoratti’s lyrics to reflect the current state of affairs in Toine’s world:
Antoine no KFC
Stick to your Slim Fast meals
Well anyway, the real fake guy (limited fake that is) just so happened to rewrite the song with fat boy lyrics and call in before I had the chance. Aside from all that I don’t expect anything from him. The only role I would suggest for him to fill is to stand in the corner and chuck 3 balls to spead our offense. He’ll sink a few.
Penny has impressed a number of onlookers. I have not seen him play yet but from what I’ve heard he’s in better shape to make the team than Allan Houston is to make the Knicks. I’m hoping this guy is our off-season gem.
Out of our new recruits, I like Brian Chase, Devon Green, and Marcus Slaughter. Chase has a nice handle and shows a decent outside shot. Green shows decent fundamentals and Slaughter is a guy who can get up ( look for some alley-oops for him if he makes the squad).
Hopefully Wade can come back to us and return to Flash form, we desperately need him.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Riley pull one more move before the season starts. Towards the end of the Atlanta game, the Hawks stacked up in the middle and decided to let us try and shoot our way back into the lead. We failed miserably.
Gone our Kapono, EJ, and Posey. I don’t know if we have that guy to fill that void right now.
Tags: Local Topics, Miami Heat, NBA, 2007 Offseason, The Groves Report! by Groves
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