May 7, 200422 yr Heat will rest when season ends By Terry Brown NBA Insider Thursday, May 6 Updated: May 6 1:47 PM ET If the Miami Heat thought Game 7 of the first round was tough, they're about to find out how hard their 90th game of the season can be when facing an Indiana Pacers team that's had 11 days of rest. "They're dealing with their dilemma and we're dealing with ours," Heat coach Stan Van Gundy said in the Palm Beach Post. "The challenge for us right now is to make sure we do enough to make sure we're prepared without overwhelming guys." Here's why. Lamar Odom has already played the fourth-most minutes in the playoffs of all participants thus far. Caron Butler has played the fifth-most. Eddie Jones has played the sixth-most and Dwyane Wade has played the seventh-most. And they're all Miami Heat. Less than 46 hours after defeating the New Orleans Hornets in the seventh game of their first-round series, the Heat are in Indiana for their first game of the second round. This may be just another game for a group of seasoned veterans accustomed to the rigors of NBA playoff basketball, but for Wade, it's the eighth playoff game of his life. "Dwyane thinks this is life in the NBA," Heat coach Stan Van Gundy said. "You come in, you get into the playoffs, you move on." It what may seem like yesterday, he was guarding Baron Davis. Tonight, he is guarding Jamaal Tinsley. Tomorrow, he'll be wondering what to do when he gets rubbed off on a Ron Artest screen after running into Jermaine O'Neal on the other end of the court. After two years in Marquette, this rookie sensation started his NBA season by losing his first seven games as a professional. The Heat were the last team in the entire league to win a game. Lamar Odom is tired, but you won't hear him or any Heat player complain about the playoff grind.They lost at Philly. They lost at Boston. They lost to Detroit. They lost at Dallas. They lost at San Antonio. They lost to Minnesota. They lost at Houston. It took 16 days from the beginning of the regular season before the Heat won their first game and they had to go into overtime to win their second. It took until April 7 and 78 games just to get to .500 for the first time all year. Forty-two wins later, the Heat finished the regular season as the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference. But not before Wade sat out 13 games due to a bruised right wrist, small forward Butler struggled to recover from offseason surgery to his left knee, newly signed Odom pushed on to more minutes than he played the previous two seasons combined and Jones suffered the worst shooting season of his career. Wade scored just over 1,200 points in two seasons at Marquette. His next basket tonight will give him 1,101 this year alone. And how do you think Odom feels? He played in only 49 games last year. He played in only 29 the year before that. He injured this wrist, that ankle and was suspended for violating terms of the league's drug policy. The point is, he's about to play his 88th game of the season after playing only 78 in the last two years. He's never been to the playoffs, much less the second round. Neither has Butler, who took until Jan. 2 to score back-to-back double-digit games this year and that was 10 against the Knicks and 12 against the Magic. Back-up forward Udonis Haslem is a rookie like Wade. This year, his Florida Gators team played 31 games while he is about to play in his 83rd. Sixthman Rafer Alston never played in more than 50 games before this year and never more than 980 minutes in a season. This year alone, he played in 82 regular-season games and 2,581 minutes. About the only Heat player with any postseason experience averaging more than nine points a game is Jones, and he may have already played too many. The 10-year veteran is coming off a season in which he shot only 40.9 percent and sinking. Jones started the season averaging 21 points per game in November. By April, he was down to 12.7. In January, he shot 43.5 percent from the field. In February, he was down to 42.1 percent. In March, it was 41.4 percent. By April, he had fallen to 35.4 percent. So far in the playoffs, Jones is averaging 15 points per game on 37.6 percent shooting. Needless to say, this has been a long season for Jones. It has been a long season for the Heat. And while the Pacers haven't played a game decided by fewer than 10 points since April 7, this Miami squad, nonetheless, seems to only thrive the harder it gets and can only hope the season gets even longer. "This is my favorite team I have ever played for," said Brian Grant in the Miami Herald. "We started 0-7 . . . and people were telling us it was going to be the worst year ever." Now, it only hurts when they celebrate.
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