MIAMI _ Welcome back to winning, South Florida. Or _ and this is important _ trying to win, at least. Welcome back to the idea of relentless competitiveness, and a sports franchise that bitterly regards the strategy of tanking as an insult, an anathema.
Welcome back, Miami Heat.
Heat season unfurled ceremonially on Friday as club president Pat Riley and new star Jimmy Butler met with the media. Training camp is next week, the preseason begins Oct. 8 and the real NBA games start Oct. 23.
This is the one Miami pro team that expects to make the playoffs every season and is plainly embarrassed not to.
That's something very different for us at the moment.
Riley did not mention the tanking Dolphins or Marlins, but the message was clear as he said Friday:
"The one thing I owe the franchise and the city is to put the most competitive team on the court that I can," he said. "Having a Jimmy Butler here is a step in that direction for real."
The overtly tanking Dolphins are 0-3 by a combined score of 133-16, the worst negative three-game points differential in the NFL since 1950. Trading talent for future draft picks makes the future bright _ maybe _ but for now leaves the franchise of Don Shula and Dan Marino among the worst in football history.
The young, rebuilding Marlins are (mercifully) finishing an NL-worst season of more than 100 losses in a ground-floor reboot that saw a fire sale of star players in order to restock a barren farm system. Like the Dolphins, the Marlins are conceding being really lousy in the short term for the promise of winning ahead. Maybe.
The Florida Panthers are not tanking. They are loaded up and feeling frisky, with high hopes. Except we have heard this before from our NHL club. And this franchise's track record of five playoff appearances in 25 years and no real sniff of national relevance since 1996 leaves little foundation for faith.
The anti-tanking Heat have earned that credibility. In the Riley era there have been 19 winning seasons, 18 playoff appearances and three championships in 24 years. With Erik Spoelstra as coach it's been nine winning records, eight playoffs and two titles in 11 years.
This would have been the offseason for Riley to sort of wave a white flag and concede a lot of losing in 2019-20. Franchise icon Dwyane Wade retired. The club was stuck with big contracts it didn't want. There was little spending money under the salary cap.
Except that the Heat, post-LeBron James era, had uncharacteristically missed the playoffs three of the past five years. He had to do something. So instead of standing pat, Riley was an active player in free agency, managing to get rid of Hassan Whiteside and his onerous contract, make a hard run at Russell Westbrook and ultimately sign Butler _ a four-time all-star still in his prime, having just turned 30.
Butler was ranked as the 21st best player in the NBA by ESPN's annual ranking out just this week. You can parse whether the shooting guard/small forward is a "superstar" or "elite." Just agree he's really good and makes the Heat better, almost certainly a playoff team.
Riley mentioned him as one of the "25 or 30" players in franchise history who can make a difference.
"I think he's a top 10 player," Riley said. "But can he help others become that kind of player? Can something else happen to enhance this team? That's our goal."
Butler, diamond earrings glistening, said, "I'm loving it here," and left little doubt that what attracted him to Miami was the Heat's winning culture _ something the Dolphins are trying desperately to get back, something Derek Jeter is trying to establish in the Marlins, something the Panthers have never really had.
"It's the culture that I hear about all the time," Butler said when asked why Miami? " "The winning habits, the winnings ways. When I kept hearing about this culture, it was like, I need that in my life."
It didn't hurt that Wade, the gift that keeps on giving, is close friends with Butler and helped steer his decision.
Butler fronts a roster that includes Justise Winslow, Bam Adebayo, a healthy Goran Dragic, Dion Waiters and James Johnson, Kelly Olynyk, Derrick Jones Jr. and top draft pick Tyler Herro.
"I like this team," Riley said. "It's put up or shut up time."
No predictions from el presidente. This, though:
"We want to win," he said, "and we want to win big."
Unlike the Dolphins and Marlins, Riley meant right now. Not someday, maybe.
