Before we spend a few minutes of your time cutting up the blame pie chart with our NFL and NBA teams, let’s be very clear about this:
Dubious personnel decisions stand as the unquestioned primary reason for the fact that the Dolphins and Heat feel galaxies away from winning championships and why the Heat seems lost at sea in the post-Jimmy Butler era.
In the Dolphins’ case, those player procurement decisions fall on the feet of general manager Chris Grier and (on the offensive side), Mike McDaniel. They’ve made their fair share of savvy acquisitions but also too many regrettable ones, which explains why the Dolphins seem stuck as a fringe wild card team and not a serious Lombardi Trophy contender.
In the Heat’s case, the franchise’s unfortunate predicament stems mostly from personnel decisions involving veteran players, decisions largely made by Pat Riley with input from several others. I would not assign any blame to Adam Simon, whose draft suggestions to Riley over the past four years generally have ranged from pretty good to very good, and not on cap savant Andy Elisburg.
You can also blame injuries in the case of the Dolphins (Jaelan Phillips, Tua Tagovailoa) and blame the Butler fiasco in the case of the Heat (though that could have been avoided by trading him or paying him before the season). Throw those both in the bad luck bin, though the Heat has culpability in how it handled the Butler situation.
But to say that each team’s problems are entirely talent-and-bad-luck issues would be inaccurate in our view.
The belief here is that both teams are underachieving with the roster each coaching staff was given. And that non-front-office share of the blame falls on both players as the coaches.
In the Dolphins’ case, against arguably the league’s weakest 2024 schedule, there still should have been enough with Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, 11 games of Tua Tagovailoa, Terron Armstead, Jonnu Smith and De’Von Achane and two skilled running backs to finish better than 8-9 overall, better than 22nd in points per game, 30th in passing plays of 20-yards or more (unthinkable on a team with Waddle and Hill) and better than 25th in running plays of 20 yards or more.
If the Dolphins had played the top three teams in the AFC North instead of the AFC South, I wouldn’t be as convinced that they underachieved.
But the Dolphins played a cupcake schedule - with only five games against playoff teams - and still managed to finish below .500 with a team featuring eight men voted by NFL players among the top 100 in the sport. (One of those players, Bradley Chubb, missed the season.)
Losing at home to Tennessee, even with a backup quarterback, and at home to Arizona cannot be blamed entirely on the front office.
Too often last season, there were mistakes with play calls (especially in short yardage), a coaching inability to find solutions to revive the deep passing game, drops and fumbles (Hill, Waddle, Raheem Mostert all to blame), untimely penalties (by Julian Hill and others).
So go ahead and blame Grier and to an extent, McDaniel for not making enough prudent personnel decisions to be anything better from the 6th to 10th team in the AFC.
But against an easy schedule, don’t try to convince me that a team with two of the NFL’s highest paid receivers, two defensive linemen who played at an exceptional level, an All Pro cornerback, a tight end who set franchise records, an elite left tackle and a running back who averaged an absurd 7.2 yards per carry as a rookie, should be under .500.
I’m not buying it.
Some of this falls on McDaniel to become a more demanding and unforgiving leader. One 2024 Dolphins player who likes McDaniel said what he needs to do -- morphing from being everyone’s buddy to a disciplinarian -- is much harder than the reverse of going from a screaming dictator to someone with a softer touch.
Whether McDaniel can pull that off – and revive a deep passing game that should be a strength instead of a weakness - will be among the key storylines of 2025.
As for our in-the-dumps NBA team…
I’m also not buying that the Heat should be nearly this hideous with a roster featuring a former No. 1 overall pick who has averaged at least 17.5 points per game in 9 of his 11 seasons (Andrew Wiggins), two players who have been All Stars in the past 14 months (Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro), three other former Heat first-round picks with NBA rotation talent, a $90 million three-point shooter (Duncan Robinson) who has produced two of the best non-Steph Curry three-point seasons in NBA history, a point guard who averaged 23 points per game with Charlotte last season and is somehow dismal here, and four functional role players who would be in many rotations (Haywood Highsmith, Alec Burks, Kyle Anderson, Davion Mitchell).
“This team should not be 10 under with their material,” a veteran NBA scout told me Tuesday evening.
Is the Heat at a talent deficit the majority of nights? Absolutely.
But should this Heat roster stand 29-39 and 3.5 games behind an Atlanta team that lost its second best player (Jalen Johnson) to a season-ending injury and traded its third best player (De’Andre Hunter) to Cleveland?
Should the Heat be neck and neck in the standings with a Bulls team that traded its top scorer (Zach LaVine) for lesser players, lost 24 point-a-game scorer DeMar DeRozan last July and has played without two starters (Lonzo Ball and Patrick Williams) for much of the season while losing 12 point per game guard Ayo Dusunmo to a season-ending injury nearly a month ago?
Is the talent gap between the Pistons really equal to their 8.5 game gap in the standings?
It’s difficult to reconcile any of that.
This Heat roster is a bad combination of a team without enough talent and a team that yet plays below the talent that it has, a group collectively that’s less than the sum of its parts, something I never thought I would say about an Erik Spoelstra team.
How much should be blamed on Spoelstra is debatable. Since the end of the COVID-altered 2020 season, every veteran player subsequently acquired by the Heat - except Mitchell - has shot worse here than they did previously.
Is that bad luck?
The offensive system?
Injury? (Likely in Victor Oladipo’s case.)
Age? (Likely in Kyle Lowry’s and Trevor Ariza’s case.)
The Heat has been outscored by 135 points in the fourth quarter since Jan. 1. Is that entirely the players’ fault? Spoelstra for not using the right lineups? A combination of the two?
And why have Robinson and Rozier declined significantly as shooters from their career apex? Is it all their fault? Do coaching and the offensive system play a role? That’s impossible to know.
Spoelstra has blamed himself for three specific things this season: calling a timeout he didn’t have against Detroit (resulting in a costly late technical foul), “overthinking” his decision to start Pelle Larsson over Haywood Highsmith for a game in January and playing his starters too many minutes in a recent game.
He also has blamed himself in a more global way, saying Monday night: “I have not come up with enough answers for this team. I have to do a better job. Our group has to do a better job.”
If you accept the notion that the Heat - with its talent level - should be closer to .500 and not 10 games under, it’s subjective how to precisely split the blame between the coaching staff and the players.
Spoelstra could firmly instruct Rozier to stop taking the step-back, off balance threes that never seem to go in and play him less, but the coach cannot suddenly make him a better three-point shooter or decision-maker, either.
So yes, go ahead and blame personnel decisions, first and foremost, for the Heat’s current mess and the Dolphins’ inability to rise from decent (even good at times) to a legitimate contender.
But to say it’s 100 percent a talent issue would be inaccurate.
Both teams have underachieved at least to an extent with their rosters, and that’s a coach/player issue.
You won’t see any ridiculous calls for a Spoelstra sabbatical.
Spoelstra, headed to the Basketball Hall of Fame someday, would be gobbled up by half the teams in the league if he were available.
Aside from winning a playoff game, McDaniel achieved the top priority when hired -- making Tagovailoa a top half NFL quarterback - and getting Miami to the playoffs twice shouldn’t be glossed over.
Both obviously deserve the opportunity to fix this (that isn’t even debatable with Spoelstra).
But they’re both going to need help from their front office. And they’re both going to need to do what Spoelstra has done numerous times in the past but not this year: maximize his roster.
This story was originally published March 19, 2025 at 10:29 AM.
Barry Jackson
Miami Herald
305-376-3491
Barry Jackson has written for the Miami Herald since 1986 and has written the Florida Sports Buzz column since 2002.