So how’d the Heat do last night, in their very first game since signing both LeBron James and Chris Bosh over the summer, adding them to a roster that already had Dwyane Wade? In the first quarter, the Heat, as a team, would score nine points — fewer than they scored in any single quarter last year. And though James would lead the Heat back from a nineteen-point deficit — a comeback that would ultimately fall short in the 88-80 Celtics win — he didn’t get much help from the other two-thirds of the Miami triumvirate: Wade shot just 25 percent from the field, and Bosh added just eight points.
Of course, some of this was to be expected: Wade missed most of the preseason with a hamstring injury, and their first opponent — a team with a Big Three/Big Four of their own — was not only a good defensive team, but one that returned four starters from last year’s conference-champion squad, and generally played like a team that wasn’t still getting to know each other. This isn’t the Heat team you’ll see a few months from now, once James, Wade, and Bosh — who committed fifteen of Miami’s seventeen turnovers on the night — have played together for more than a few preseason minutes. The Boston fans booed James when he touched the ball last night — no surprise there — and by the end of the game, a chant of “Overrated” had gone up from the TD Garden crowd. The booing will continue indefinitely in this post-Decision era; the part about the Heat being overrated, though, probably won’t.