NBA

I’m Rooting For The Miami Heat Because I Hate Them And Want Them To Die

I hate the Miami Heat.

I don’t like their fans. I think their uniforms are stupid. I don’t like the way their team was put together. I don’t like that they’re opening a nightclub in their arena. I don’t like that you can have courtside seats to their games, and still be allowed to wear Uggs. I don’t like the fact that the people who cheer for them have to be told how to cheer for them.

I hate the Miami Heat.

But the thing I hate more than the Miami Heat is hearing about the Miami Heat.

I’m sick of hearing about The Decision. I am sick of hearing about that stupid “Not One! Not Two! Not Three!” press conference. I am sick of hearing about how clutch LeBron James is or isn’t. I am sick of TV analysts debating all of these things, then re-debating them, except this time, debating them a little louder.

I have officially ceased giving any semblance of a shit about the Miami Heat.

Which is why I want them to win this series.

This Miami Heat Hate Horse has long been dead — it’s been dead for months, actually. You know it, I know it, we all know it. Dead horse. And you know what happens if Miami loses their second NBA Finals in a row?

That dead horse — that poor, poor dead horse — gets dug up out of the ground and beaten for another year. Like, every day, for a full year. There will be horse blood spilling out of Skip Bayless’ mouth. Colin Cowherd will be bathing in dead horse entrails. There will be dead horseparts seeping out of your television and radio. By the time we get to August, your living room will be covered in dead horse. And no one wants that.

A living room covered in dead horse.

I love the Thunder. I think they (and their fans) are probably the best thing about pro basketball right now. But I want a Heat title this year, purely because I’m sick of hearing about them not having a title. If they lose, you might as well stay away from any sports-related media outlet for the entire summer. (Including ours.)

Because if they lose…

All of that stuff about LeBron not being clutch? LET’S TALK ABOUT IT AGAIN. The Decision? LET’S REVISIT IT FOR A SPELL. Hey, why has Erik Spoelstra looked like he’s been passing non-stop kidney stones for the last two years? I don’t know, but cue up another highlight package of him grimacing. WE’LL GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS, STEPHEN A.!

I can’t take that for another summer — nay, another year — because by the time this series wraps up, hockey will have been over, NFL training camp will still be weeks away, and all we’ll only have one thing to occupy our 6pm SportsCenters: baseball. There’s only so much space baseball can fill, and it’ll be a lot of dead air. So, if Miami loses — oh, sweet Lord, if Miami loses — TV producers, staring a barren wasteland of summer sports storylines in the face, will have no choice but to fill that dead air with that poor dead horse. (The natural counterbalance to this, of course, will be all of the storylines about OKC winning — which will be fun, but not enough. People will talk about Miami losing more than the Thunder winning.)

And you know what? You may initially enjoy another Heat Fail Party. Remember the one we had last June, after they lost to Dallas? The one starring Drunk Hipster Dirk? That was fun. And over the last two seasons, the Heat have been one of the most consistently hateable teams in any professional sport ever; a week of gleefully celebrating another Finals loss will be a nice distraction for some of you when you get home from work.

For a week. Then it will start to get old. Then it will start to get annoying. THEN, after the tenth or eleventh “MORE ON THE STORM BREWING IN SOUTH BEACH” SportsCenter lead-in in ten or eleven days, you may or may not have the urge to kill.

In fact, hating on the Heat has begun to wear thin. The reason being that The Decision — and the “Not One, Not Two, Not Three” press conference — happened two years ago. That’s a long time. And really, if you’re going to hate a guy for being roped into hosting a stupid TV special two years ago, and you’re not from Cleveland, you may want to find different, more constructive avenues with which to expel your irrational celebrity anger (I recommend the cast of “Girls,” because everyone loves them, AND I SAY IT’S ABOUT TIME WE KNOCKED THEM DOWN A PEG).

As Jeff Van Gundy put it during the Heat’s Game 6 win over Boston, the statute of limitations on hating LeBron James (and, by extension, the Miami Heat) is up. It’s over. Done with. We need to move on. And the only way we can move on — and stop having to hear about this stupid, stupid team — is if they win a championship. Otherwise, you won’t be able to get away from them, or the dead horse they’ve become.

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