AS RIVAL TEAMS watched the Miami Heat climb out of the play-in muck and into the NBA Finals, many discussed the same question internally: What -- if anything -- can we learn from this?
For some executives, the answer was very little. The Heat's run, the thinking went, was some combination of a fluke and a reversion to normal for a team that had gone cold from 3-point range all season. Would they have survived even one round had Giannis Antetokounmpo not injured his back in the first game of Miami's first-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks?