NBA Power Rankings

So, the Heat have a winning streak going?

I know, it’s been all over the press, which hardly signaled it was a big deal to me. Personally, after a lifetime in it, noting its tendency to, uh, get excited, if the press says something is up, I suspect it’s down.

With the streak at 19 and the press hyperventilating about the 1971-72 Lakers’ record of 33 — another mere 14-game streak away – I presented my take in two words: “Heat this.”

With the Heat now at 27, five beyond the second-longest (and largely forgotten) 22-game run the Rockets put together five years ago, it is undeniably a remarkable feat, even if it goes no farther.

The real significance isn’t the record but the experience, underlining what a gift to the NBA this team has been, from its creation in the summer of 2010 when LeBron James used ESPN to announce he was “taking my talents to South Beach.”

That made them the most reviled team in NBA history, heralding a nightmare season with coach Erik Spoelstra supposedly about to be fired on a daily basis, with the players mocked as crybabies after he noted there had been tears in the dressing room following a key loss, leading up to LeBron gagging in the Finals loss to Dallas and a farewell barrage by the press as a quitter, choker, mercenary, etc.

For the NBA, which had only begun to revive from the record lows of the post-Michael Jordan era (a 6.5 rating for the 2003 Spurs-Nets Finals, broken by a 6.2 for 2007 Spurs-Cavaliers), it added up to box office ratings, an unanticipated revenue windfall and a badly needed new day.

Of course, it came out of the Heat’s hide. ESPN’s Brian Windhorst recently asked Spoesltra about last spring’s adventures, such as trailing Boston, 3-2, in the conference finals. After what they went through in 2010-11, said Spoesltra, nothing else would ever compare.

Remember this dialogue between the press and James after Game 6 of the 2011 Finals?

Q: Does it hurt to know so many fans are happy to see you fall?

LBJ: Absolutely not. … All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they have to get back to the real world at some point.

I thought it was not only true but a natural response by someone who had been hounded for a year and was now getting his nose rubbed in it while being asked to comment on the experience.

Not that that represented the consensus, as decribed at the time by Fox Sports’ Bill Reiter:

America went crazy. That’s what happens when a guy who calls himself The King and tattoos “Chosen 1” across his back, that same guy who’d just blown an NBA championship with a level of weakness and cowardice that almost defies words, responds by talking about everyday people stuck with their problems and God’s place in the NBA Finals.

Blowhard, came the response. Jerk. Petulant, out-of-touch star. Loser. This guy, so many said, is the same pompous and egotistical villain we’ve hated for almost a year.

Of course, what’s better than putting someone on a pedestal, pulling his weak, cowardly butt down off it, and then seeing the Petulant Jerk haul himself back atop it?

For the press as well as the NBA, the Heat is the gift that keeps giving.

With adoration running as hot now as hate ran then, their winning streak has eclipsed March Madness, when the league normally goes behind the NCAA’s moon.

Not that breaking the record wouldn’t be a major accomplishment, but here’s one thing I can guarantee:

If the Heat then fall short of winning a title, the press will take their streak and bash them over the head with it, calling them chokers, asking how they could allow themselves to burn burn themselves out, etc.

No way, you say?

Remember the spring of 2010, when the world fell in on LeBron within days of having been crowned the back-to-back MVP?

In any case, good luck, Heat. You’ll need it, and not just for seven more games.

On to the rankings.