Thursday night was about as good as the Miami HEAT have looked in just over a calendar year, a 42-point pièce de dominance that would have cast shadows over any night any of their previous season even with the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks missing key parts of their rotation. The HEAT had the juice, perhaps fueled by the playoff loss last season or the mere fact that it is no longer last season, and the Bucks did not. You couldn’t ask for a much better start to the marathon.
The game was out of question so quickly, so early, that it’s difficult to create any hard takeaways outside of Miami being, so far, as advertised.