Pinch Me

I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away

The Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter

This wasn't supposed to happen. The Miami Heat weren't even supposed to make the conference finals. Their weaknesses as a unit were supposed to prove Pat Riley's many critics right; they were supposed to get knocked out by New Jersey. Hell, after the Bulls tied their opening round series at 2 games apiece, many believed this Heat team (I wish I could write these Heat, but I can't; them's the breaks when you you name a team an uncountable noun) was headed for a first round exit.

Didn't happen that way, did it?

Instead, Shaq stopped playing like a runaway bull, restrained himself, stayed out of foul trouble, and voila!, the Heat brought the Bulls and MJ's fist pumping back down to earth.

But the Bulls were lucky to even make it to the post season; the Nets were, according to sportswriters who do a lot of coke, possibly the best team in the East. No way Miami could have as much success against New Jerz, right?

Correct. They had more. They dispatched the Nets in one game fewer than their series with the Bulls took. Call it the Vince Carter Factor, or call it a beautiful tableau of transcendental unity. Seriously, I don't mind either.

But the Pistons, man. The DEE-troit fucking Pistons? No way. No fuckin' way. They couldn't do it last year with a team with a better regular season record; no way they were going to beat this year's 64-and-18 bunch.

But, in keeping with the theme of this post season, a funny thing happened: just around the time the Heat were finding that unity they sorely needed, the Pistons were coming undone. After Lebron and Co. pushed them to the limit, they looked more like Cain Marko with his helmet off than The Juggernaut; more like Christopher Reeve after he gave up his powers in Superman II. Suddenly, at least to people actively watching the playoffs, instead of those coke-snorting sportswriters living on Planet Sleep, the Heat looked like they could withstand any opponent, conquer any adversity.

This surely wasn't supposed to happen.

And now Pistons players are criticizing Flip Saunders. Color me surprised. Not the same guy who pulled a reverse Stan Van Gundy and bizarrely started giving serious PT to guys such as Carlos Delfino, Tony Delk and Maurice Evans this deep into the playoffs!? Impossible! Zut Alors!

But it would be too convenient to attribute Miami's success in this series to the Pistons running out of gas. Yes, Detroit has played like shit this series; yes, their vaunted defence has been pretty much a joke; and, yes, Flip Saunders probably couldn't coach them to an NCAA title at this point; but give credit where it's due. Save for their awful free throw percentage, the Heat have been the most solid team during these playoffs. No, they haven't had any nail-biting finishes (unless you include their near-comeback against the Pistons in game 2), nor have they had the most exciting games -- not hardly. What they have been, though, is simply the best team in these playoffs. Bar none.

This wasn't supposed to happen. What once seemed impossible will -- barring an epic planet and the stars and the moons collapse -- very soon become reality.

The Miami Heat are one win away from making their first trip to the NBA Finals.

And to whom should we bow at the alter for this impending miracle? Shaq? D-Wade? Antoine "why didn't you play this smart your entire career" Walker?

Disciples.

Our messiah is none other than Pat Riley.

After the uber-trade was executed last summer, I was as big a critic of Riley's as anyone. I liked Joneses Damon and Eddie; I despised Antoine Walker for his selfish play, Jason Williams for his poor shot selection. And when Riley signed Gary Payton, who turns 38 soon, instead of a younger back-up point guard, I was borderline furious. These were moves more attributable to someone such as Isaiah Thomas than Pat Riley.

Read that last sentence again. I did, and it's made me want to point out another of my unfair and incorrect criticisms, namely that I was doubly furious when Riles supplanted Stan Van Gundy as Heat coach early in the season. I like Stan Van, and for a while believed that Riley made him step down -- please, let's not fool ourselves into buying Stan's claim that he wanted to spend more time with his family* -- because Riles, having been out of the coaching game a few years, was again hungry for the spotlight.

Never that. Riles's real motive to coach again was because he knew he had to take responsibility for the off-season moves he masterminded should they appear, early, to have failed. If he was going to live with himself for making that blockbuster trade, he had to step to the fore and call the shots, to make sure his vision of a championship contender unfolded as he had planned. In a way, he did Senior Hedgehog a favor, saving him from the awful criticism which would have resulted had Van Gundy continued to coach this Heat team. In hindsight, the personnel changes definitely weren't Isaiah-type moves, because Riley wouldn't allow them to be.

Riley taking the reigns, however, wasn't a quick fix. Not by a longshot.

The drama lasted the duration of the regular season, and continued into the start of the playoffs: it appeared not a damn thing had changed save the weather, and big helpings of schadenfreude were being consumed all around.

Me, I was hiding in a cupboard, hands clasped, praying with white knuckles that the Heat keep winning, that a change soon come.

And hallelujah! it did, the change building slowly and with care (and love; let us not forget love), slowly simmering before coming to a boil, like the perfect sauce cooked by a virtuoso chef. And everybody knows the best chefs make their ingredients adhere to the sauce, not vice-versa.

When Miami took out Chicago I was relieved, ecstatic when they bitch-slapped the Nets; but always the prospect of a showdown with the Pistons loomed, and that I feared like Donald Pleasance feared Mike Myers.

I had hopes of a Lebron/Wade series, but in the end I was only fooling myself. No, it had to be this way: it had to be against Detroit. No excuses.

I was thrilled -- and, truth be told, more than a little surprised at the ease in which it occurred -- that Miami took game 1. I was relieved that the series was shifting back to Miami after the Pistons reasserted themselves in game 2. In game 3 I was again overjoyed when the Heat won; but I knew that everything rested on the outcome of game 4. If the Pistons won, they would take a split back to the D, and that thought was palpably frightening.

The Miami Heat absolutely had to win today's game. And they did. There were a few bumps in the road (the end of the 2nd quarter and the beginning of the 3rd), but the Heat prevailed, not only beating the Pistons, but demoralizing them as well.

The series shifts to Detroit for game 5 on Wednesday (Thursday for me). And if the Heat should win, that cry of triumph you hear in the distance will be mine.

But it will be somewhat restrained, because one further step still remains (Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes did 'Money Train'/Dave Grohl misses Kurt Cobain): the NBA title.

I'm anticipating Riley will prepare another marvelous dish to get my mouth watered for that occasion, these conference finals merely an apetizer for the main course.

Let's Go Heat!

* As I read somewhere, when he returns to coaching will he give wanting to spend less time with his family as a reason?