Paul Pierce has made a bold prediction about the Miami Heat this season after the team has struggled to win games in recent days. They’ve been hit by the COVID-19 disease and some players have missed games but even before that, the Heat were fighting to find their touch this season and so far, that hasn’t happened.
That led Pierce to predict the Floridian team won’t make the postseason this year, regardless of how young the season is and the fact that they can still recover their best form. Well, The Truth doesn’t believe that and during a recent edition of ESPN’s The Jump, the 2008 NBA champion explained why the Heat won’t have success this campaign.
“As great as the Miami Heat were in the playoffs last year, they will not make the playoffs this year Rach (Rachel Nichols). And we saw a play earlier in the show where [Nikola] Jokic got the ball and threw it full court,” said Pierce, via Heat Nation. “That’s not the Miami Heat team we saw last year – full of grit, full of grind like the Memphis Grizzlies. That team was built on hard work and toughness, and I have not seen that this year, and that’s why I don’t think they’ll make the playoffs.”
Paul Pierce’s history with the Miami Heat has gotten interesting over the last decade, when LeBron James joined the team and dominated Pierce and his Celtics, becoming the best team in the Eastern Conference from 2010 through 2014. Pierce is always making big claims about the Heat and how they will fare and this is another example of that.
To be fair, though, Miami appears to be lost this season; even Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo called out the team for their lack of aggressiveness on defense, stating they need to represent their culture or it will be hard to win this season. Last year, they surprised everybody when they landed in the NBA Finals, where the Los Angeles Lakers beat them in six games. This season, they don’t have that level they showed in the Orlando bubble and that is a big problem for Erik Spoelstra and co.
