Quote:Miami Heat has sacrificed much to reach NBA Finals

BY DAN LE BATARD

dlebatard@MiamiHerald.com

Cut through the noise and nonsense. Go to the core of what we are actually watching here. Don’t let your clarity get clouded by the color you paint your face. Don’t let anger clog your filter. Just make these players faceless. Take the names off the uniforms.



And let’s start with the starters:



The point guard has been in the league for more than a decade. His body is kind of broken. He has played nearly 100 playoff games, not one of them in the NBA Finals. On his last legs, he wants a championship. How much is it worth to him? At least $6.2 million. That’s how much he gave up. All he had to do next season was show up for work in Washington. That money is now gone forever, though. He can’t and won’t get it back next year, his body not quite as healthy as his desire. So, clearly, he plays now for the kind of riches not measured in dollars. But here’s the shocking part: Many of his teammates, plural, have given up more money than him.



The center is a self-made stoic who works so hard that his boss has had to kick him out of the gym and tell security not to let him back in. And he has snuck back in anyway. He is a very quiet overachiever. Never talks trash. You won’t see a change of expression from him, or any kind of outburst, not even when he blocks five shots in a playoff game. All the little things basketball millionaires don’t like to do? That’s the entirety of his job. It would be hard for him to be a more model teammate. His current coach once told others that he simply wasn’t NBA material. But he proved him wrong with work, not words. He won’t tell you how much he cares. No, he will show you.



The power forward is unusually introspective and honest. You don’t get that combination much in this testosterone-soaked world, bravado often a mask for the vulnerable. This gets him called soft, even though the soft don’t survive in this jungle, never mind average 19 and 8. After a playoff victory in which he scored 34 points, he revealed that he didn’t know he had a big ego until he got here and had to start sacrificing shots, glory, money. When do you ever hear that? This was after he admitted that the first playoff game in Boston rattled his emotional equilibrium. When do ever hear that? He will never again be The Man on his team, but he does endure a disproportionate amount of the criticism when things go wrong. He’s OK with that. He explains in his way that you never know how hard sacrifices really are until you are actually making them.



The shooting guard is unusually humble for a superstar. Professional, too, always. He has this way of treating arena security, staff and workers with gentle grace. His teammates take his lead. They follow him, out of respect. He goes to the gym late, late at night to work on his shot alone, after all these years. It is odd to say, but the two-time MVP of the league looks up to him. They have a little-brother-big-brother relationship and are genuine friends. Pressed, the shooting guard says awkwardly in this testosterone-soaked world that, yes, they love each other. The Heat was banking on this respect to reform any bad habits a big ego might have picked up in Cleveland. And, following big brother’s lead, it is worth noting that, despite the storm around them, neither of them has failed to live up to a media responsibility this entire noisy season. But the two-time MVP is the problem, of course. He did a TV show that still echoes all these months later. It felt soaked in ego, hubris, bad advice and lack of self-awareness. Still, the sacrifices he made to win are real and large. His good name and image, for one. And then there’s this: He’s making $19 million less than Joe Johnson. He made these sacrifices to admit he needed help — something a frustrated Derrick Rose now sees clearly as he finally gets past little brother and finds big brother waiting for him at the rim. An hour of TV has overwhelmed the choice he made, but it isn’t irrelevant that the very worst thing this team has done all season resulted in a multi-million-dollar donation to a boys and girls club in Connecticut.



And how about the best players off the bench? How much do they care? The power forward is a hometown guy who has only sacrificed $24 million to remain in Miami. He is always thanking Pat Riley, publicly and privately, for believing in him when no one else did, and he repays this with a gratitude you see in elbows, floor burns and a rushed return from injury. By his side is the shooter who can’t really shoot because his thumbs don’t work. He will need surgery after the season. He should have had it already, actually, but he declined because this is how his playoff résumé looks after a decade in the league:



• 2000-2001: Four games.



• 2001-2002: Four games.



• 2003-2004: Four games.



• 2004-2005: Four games.



• 2005-2006: Four games.



And none since.



So he took less money to be here, and he keeps diving all over the floor with thumbs that don’t work, and he flies to Chicago despite having a sick infant in the hospital, because of how much he cares about winning. It doesn’t sound like there is much of anything that’ll keep him from appreciating every moment in the 12 playoff games he already has played this year with those thumbs that don’t work.



Put this team in an Olympic uniform, and our country would wrap itself in the flag and root for this group with uncommon zeal.



Alas, the word “Miami” is stretched across the jersey. So, instead, America will now root for the German guy.