The season likely won't be remembered for the 11-30 standing at midseason. The Miami Heat managed to mask that misery with what followed.
But it likely also won't be remembered for the 13-game winning streak or surge back into playoff contention. The inconsistency over the past month has muted much of that renaissance.
No, for the Miami Heat, what will define 2016-17 will be what follows, these final five games that start still situated in a playoff seed, even with five losses in their last eight games.
"It's been a roller-coaster ride," coach Erik Spoelstra understated Sunday, before giving his team Monday off. "There's a ton of emotion right now and it's all of it. And I love it. I love the guys feeling all this, the emotion of elation, frustration, anger, disappointment."
It means the games still matter, now more than ever, arguably more than any regular-season game when the going was far simpler during the Big Three era with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
The locker room has gone from quiet to quieter after the past two games, the losses at AmericanAirlines Arena to the New York Knicks and Denver Nuggets.
And yet, on Jan. 13, when the Heat stood 11-30 after a loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, if you had asked anyone and everyone in that locker room if they would have taken this position at the moment, there would have been unanimity.
Now, no game looms larger than Wednesday's at the Spectrum Center against the Charlotte Hornets, a game with even more at stake than Hassan Whiteside's buzzer-beating tip-in last week against the Detroit Pistons. Beat the Hornets, and the Heat effectively could reduce the race for the eight East playoff seeds to nine teams. Lose to the Hornets and the Heat could fall to No. 10 in the conference.
A loss to the Hornets would drop the Heat to 1-3 on the season against Charlotte, a critical component in potential multiple-team tiebreakers. As it is, even if the Heat tie the season series 2-2, Charlotte still would have the head-to-head tiebreaker by virtue of a superior division record.
With the Heat having closed 1-2 against the Chicago Bulls and 2-1 against the Indiana Pacers, the last thing they would need is a 1-3 record against the Hornets factoring into a multiple-team tiebreaker.
And yet with it so tight at the bottom of the East _ the Heat at 37-40 currently seeded ahead of the No. 9 Pacers only by that tiebreaker, while one game behind the No. 7 Bulls and two behind the No. 6 Atlanta Hawks _ it well may come down to higher math at the completion of all those 8 p.m. Eastern Conference games at the April 12 close of the regular season.
While this might not be a time to want your team focusing on the standings and tiebreakers, it's practically unavoidable, including the sigh of relief after the Pacers finally fell in double-overtime Sunday to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
"The good thing is that we've been in this now for about three weeks, so we've had the discussion a couple of times," Spoelstra said. "I've heard them talking about it since then. These games become so competitive that you have no choice but to only focus on the task at hand. And then you start going down that rabbit hole, of, 'This team should that, that team should do this,' it never turns out that way.
"Even the ones that you try to predict with other teams, you don't need to add that ancillary stress of rooting or not rooting for certain teams. But I'm OK with them watching games and being a fan about it, and being excited about this playoff race. They've earned it. They put in a lot of sweat equity to get to this point. And I want them to enjoy this whole ride."
With no games scheduled in the NBA Monday, minds could be cleared. And then? An eight-day, five-game sprint into the unknown for the Heat.
"They've earned the right for all these emotions," Spoelstra said, "and it's great for this group to go through it."
