The Miami Mafia: Carving up the Miami Heat’s Mount Rushmore

The Miami Heat has a storied history. Who makes the cut for the team’s Mount Rushmore?

For a franchise that’s barely thirty years old, the Miami Heat have a remarkable history.

South Beach’s finest have tasted championship champagne three times. The first came in dramatic (and controversial) fashion. Down 2–0 in the series to the Dallas Mavericks, Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O’Neal and company powered their way to four straight victories, just the third time in NBA Finals history (at the time) a team had recovered from two-game deficit.

Pat Riley pulled off perhaps the greatest free-agency coup in league history when he lured LeBron James and Chris Bosh to the team in 2010. It wasn’t just the weather, or Riley’s fist full of rings, it was also the established pedigree; the Miami Heat are winners. Pat Riley is a winner.

The four presidents on Mount Rushmore all represent a unique aspect of America’s development as a nation. Which members (and former members) of the Miami Heat represent the organization in the same way?

Honorable Mentions:

• Shaquille O’Neal: The Diesel isn’t quite identifiable enough with the franchise to justify inclusion. He was incredible his first few years in a Heat uniform, but it burned out fairly quickly. One championship and two trips to the conference finals would be more than enough legacy for the average superstar. Shaq has higher standards.
• Chris Bosh: Bosh was criminally undervalued by the general public during his Heat tenure. Despite having an aging roster by his final year, and league competition smartening up to how to play against their hyper-aggressive/trapping style, the Heat never finished worse than 11th in defensive efficiency. Two years they finished in the top five. Bosh was instrumental in what the team did on that end. On offense, his ability to space the floor and move the ball (and, just as crucially, accept a subservient role) helped the Heat work around the awkward fit between LeBron and Wade. Bosh is a clear first-ballot Hall-of-Famer.
• Erik Spoelstra: Coaching LeBron and the Heatles may have come with some glorious benefits, but it was also an incredibly tough job in many respects. The fit between Wade and LeBron was never the cleanest, and the top-heavy nature of the roster meant holes had to be filled frequently. Spoelstra did a masterful job schematically, and an even better one managing the egos and superstar dynamics that could have swallowed the franchise whole (like, um, the 2017 Cleveland Cavaliers).
• Other honorable mentions: Tim Hardaway, Eddie Jones, Glen Rice

George Washington: Pat Riley

George Washington is to America as Pat Riley is to the Miami Heat. He’s the founding father of the Heat’s culture, emblematic of everything the organization stands for: commitment, excellence and style. The Heat may have found their feet early in their existence (they made the first round of the playoffs in their fourth season), but their identity was only found when Riles stunned the Knicks by rejecting the richest contract ever offered to a head coach (three million dollars per year) after the 1994–95 season. Washington wanted America to be free of the dictatorial and unfair rule of England. Riley wanted the freedom to make decisions on personnel, to mold a team as he saw fit. The Miami Heat provided just that opportunity.

The Heat went 42–40 in Riley’s first year at the helm. Even though the team didn’t make it any further in the playoffs (they lost in the first round to the eventual champion Bulls), they established the type of hard-nosed defense that had become Riley’s trademark in New York. Injuries and bad luck would hamper the team in many of the following seasons, but that didn’t stop Riley from flexing his GM muscles trying to make the team better. Riley finally landed his big fish in 2004, trading a package of Lamar Odom, Brian Grant, Caron Butler and a first-round pick for Shaquille O’Neal. Later, he would be instrumental in landing LeBron James and Chris Bosh, a feat that paid off just as quickly in adding to the slick-haired one’s personal ring collection.

For better or worse the team has always been shaped by Riley. While some have argued that Riley’s pride and stubbornness has cost him relationships with star players (most notably with Shaq and LeBron, to a lesser extent Wade), those are qualities that gave birth to one of the most envied organizational cultures in all of sports, much in the way Washington helped give birth to America. To omit the gelled-back one from a place in Heat history would be criminal.

Thomas Jefferson: Alonzo Mourning

Jefferson was instrumental in the birth of America, with a direct or indirect hand in the writing of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The young Miami Heat needed a leader, a superstar to help kick start the franchise and gain respectability. Alonzo Mourning was perfect. Talented and fiercely competitive, ‘Zo was the perfect compliment to Riley’s Washington. Together, they crafted what the Miami Heat became.

‘Zo won back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year awards between 1998–2000, testament to just how dominant he was on that end before a kidney disease so cruelly robbed him of his physicality in 2000.

Much like Jefferson, ‘Zo was not one to shirk from engaging with a seemingly insurmountable foe. Though Mourning and the Heat didn’t quite have the same success against Michael Jordan and the Bulls as America did against the British Empire, it didn’t stop him from making bold declarations of intent.

Down three games to zero against the Bulls in the 1997 eastern conference playoffs, Mourning stared into the faces of the reporting press after game three and coldly declared:

‘’We will win on Monday,’’ said Mourning, after someone asked if the Bulls would sweep. ‘’We’re going to come ready to play.’’

Mourning backed up his bold words with 18 points and 14 rebounds, leading a Heat defense that held the GOAT to a 9-for-35 shooting night. It was the type of performance Heat fans had grown accustomed to.

Theodore Roosevelt: LeBron James

I know it probably seems ridiculous to compare the most bullet-proof, and borderline inhuman basketball player in the history of the game to a man who suffered from poor health…but hear me out. LeBron wasn’t just the hero the Heat wanted, he was the hero they needed.

Miami had suffered through two seasons of mediocrity in the years following Shaq’s departure. The team was a bunch of spare parts propped up by Dwayne Wade, playing at a level few in NBA history have reached. (Seriously, look at Wade’s advanced stats between ’08 and ’10. When you’ve finished un-rolling your eyeballs from the back of your head, check out the the teams he had. Both seasons the Heat made the playoffs. Tell me again about how unprecedented Russell Westbrook was last season.)

The team desperately needed an injection of hope. Boy, did they get it. The fireworks, the decision and the pageantry may have made “The Heatles” the most unpopular road team in the NBA for a year or two, but within the fanbase they were certified gods, LeBron in particular. LeBron not only changed the Heat’s fate as a franchise, he completely reshaped the framework of NBA free-agency, ushering in a new era of player empowerment that continues to grow to this day.

Roosevelt had a similar effect on America and the Presidency. A leading advocate of progressive politics, Roosevelt sought a more inclusive and socially-democratic form of government. He was a staunch advocate of expanding social welfare and pursuing a fairer justice system.

Two titles in four years. Four consecutive trips to the finals. Highlight reel play after highlight reel play:

Some, perhaps Heat lifers, may bristle at the notion of a player who only logged four seasons in a Heat uniform as an all-time great. That may be a fair to a point, but when that player is LeBron James and he delivered you not one, but two championships? Well, conventions go by the wayside.

Abraham Lincoln: Dwayne Wade

Abraham Lincoln is arguably the most beloved president in American history. The “Great Emancipator”, the man who declared the evil of slavery illegal, immoral and antithetical to the spirit of the United States. While I’m not going to attribute such noble accomplishments to the man known (at least in his heyday) as “Flash”, Wade holds a Lincoln-like place in the hearts of Heat fans everywhere.

If you’re a Heat fan old enough to remember Wade during his athletic prime, few things give you more basketball-loving joy. Wade was glorious. Dunking. Pirouetting. Stealing souls at the rim. Wade is second all-time in blocks for the franchise. Dwayne Wade is six-foot-four.

Lincoln’s reputation as a champion of human freedom has been called into question in later years, much in the same way Wade’s reputation has suffered. Wade may have been widely mocked for opting in to the last year of his deal with the Bulls, but if any player has earned the right to some easy money it’s him. Wade made just under four million dollars the year he helped deliver the Heat’s first chip. He, along with Bosh and LeBron, left money on the table to help get numbers two and three.

His relentless playing style has left his body in disarray, so why shouldn’t he grab as much money as he can? The wider NBA audience should be grateful we had almost a decade of plays like these to enjoy:

Crazy Horse: Udonis Haslem

Just like Crazy Horse, Haslem may not make the mountain. But he will always be there, watching over the franchise in the same way.

There you have it, the Miami Heat’s Mount Rushmore. There were some painful omissions, but that speaks to how incredibly successful the franchise has been. The Heat will always be a destination as long as as they have their culture, Riley, Spo and South Beach. Whether the team can maintain their standards of excellence after Riley departs remains to be seen. The team’s future has a lot to live up to.