Far from hot: Heat suffer epic collapse

MIAMI – Alonzo Mourning had no idea how right he was.

It was Dec. 19, the night the Miami Heat center crumbled in a heap to the floor in Atlanta, his kneecap having fallen somewhere around his ankle after a tendon exploded. He slammed his hand on the court in anger and frustration, then shouted: “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.”

He was referring to his season, possibly his career.

He should have been talking about Miami’s chances for 2007-08 – a season that will go down as an epic Heat disaster, the culmination of a stunning fall from grace that no other team two years removed from an NBA championship, not even the Chicago Bulls in the era that immediately followed Michael Jordan’s departure after six titles in eight years, has ever experienced.

Two years ago, Miami won 16 games in the playoffs and swilled a champion’s brand of champagne.

This season, saddled with the worst record in basketball, the Heat might not win 16 games, total.

“With this season and everything that’s gone on, you’ve got to be like, ‘Man, come on,’ ” Heat center Mark Blount said. “But you’ve got to still play.”

Which they will, until April 16, when this miserable season will mercifully end and the Heat will begin anew, a process that has already started in many respects. Shaquille O’Neal was traded away, and now, Dwyane Wade – the MVP of that championship run in 2006 – has seen his season end because of continued problems with his long-troublesome left knee.

The 125-game sellout streak has ended, the days of “15 Strong” are done and the Heat are, officially, playing out the string.

“Everything happens to me for a reason,” Wade said. “I’ve had my fun times, I got my championship early and I did a lot of great things. But now it’s time for me to go through this. I didn’t go through it early in my career like a lot of great players. I was able to win a championship my third year and had a possibility to win it my second year. Now in my fourth and fifth year, I hit the trials and tribulations of what everyone goes through. And other people are shining. I had my time to shine.”

The constant question in Heat circles is this: How did this happen?

Nobody knows for certain, including those in the Miami locker room.

“The only thing we can do now is play as hard as possible,” Heat guard Chris Quinn said. “It’s obviously not the situation we want to be in, but all we can do is make the best of it.”

There was a sense at the start of the season – even with few, if any, pundits expecting the Heat to make another championship run – that a team with O’Neal, Wade, Mourning and coach Pat Riley would certainly find its way into the playoff mix.

That theory didn’t last long, and now the image of the franchise is already changing.

O’Neal? Amid a messy divorce from his wife, he seemed unhappy in Miami, eventually wanted a buyout from the Heat and got traded to the Suns for Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks – who joined a half-dozen other new teammates on Miami’s injured list shortly after arriving in South Florida.

“I don’t know what we did to deserve this,” said Heat forward Udonis Haslem, whose season has also been derailed by injuries.

Riley will almost certainly go into the Hall of Fame later this year, but no one knows for sure if he’ll coach again next season.

He’s always had critics of his coaching style, but these days, Riley’s toughest critic is himself, and that may be a sign of what his future plan might be, too.

“I have not done a very good job coaching this team,” he said.

Said New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas: “The things that Pat has done for the game as a player, and also a coach, and the lives that he’s impacted in the game … he and Phil Jackson, right now in our league, those two are basketball royalty.”

It hardly seems that way right now, after a season like this.

“It’s been a nightmare,” Riley said.

Soon, though, he can be like Mourning – and say it’s over.