FanHouse Erik Spoelstra

Seemingly every NBA franchise is cinching its garter these days. The Bobcats skipped Summer League. The Grizzlies have discarded their dedicated amateur scouting corps. The Kings left a benchwarmer (Kenny Thomas) at home on road trips last season to save on accommodations, and the team's owners downgraded themselves to coach. The Nets sold an ad on practice jerseys and tried to juice ticket sales by giving away LeBron jerseys. (Note: LeBron does not play for the Nets.)

MIAMI -- It's not like only one team has shown up for this playoff series, which is what happened with the Cavs and the Detroit Deadbeats. It's just that these two don't show up at the same time.

Not to rain on anyone's playoff parade, but it's hard to imagine a Game 7 with any less suspense than what we'll see Sunday when the Heat play the Hawks in Atlanta. Hopefully, there will be golf to watch.

Can't predict the winner, but it won't take long to find out who it will be. These two take turns quitting early. It has become the anti-Celtics-Bulls series.

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MIAMI -- There were apologies, no I-shouldn't-have-done it tone in his voice Friday morning when Hawks forward Josh Smith was asked again about his late-game showboating Wednesday that clearly riled the Miami Heat. In a series that has grown both increasingly physical and combative, Smith was happy to fuel the fire before Game 6 begins Friday night.

Smith used Atlanta's lopsided Game 5 victory and a breakaway layup to demonstrate his crowd-pleasing, between-the-legs dunk in front of the Heat bench with just under four minutes remaining. Smith missed the dunk, disappointing the Atlanta crowd and ticking off the beaten-down Heat players. And their memories are good.

Miami's Dwyane Wade called it, "very insulting.'' Smith said Friday he didn't care what Wade thinks.

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The Miami Heat made it official on Wednesday. They're the worst team remaining in the NBA playoffs. That's just one conclusion you can draw after Atlanta won Game 5 over Miami 106-91 to go up 3-2 in the series.

How can the Heat be anything other than the worst team remaining when they came into the playoffs as an underdog and, now, Dwyane Wade is not 100 percent? Hey, it's just another way of saying that coach Erik Spoelstra is doing a great coaching job.

Miami was down 23 points at halftime, and the only reason to watch the remaining 24 was to find out who was going to commit the next hard foul and who was going to be on the receiving end of it.

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It's trophy time in the NBA, and the FanHouse crew has submitted its ballots. Find out which players deserve to take home the hardware and which ones don't, in our NBA Awards series. Next up: Coach of the Year.

This turned out to be one of those seasons where it would be hard to be wrong in making a pick for Coach of the Year. Eight different coaches were named by our voters, and it was so close that we ended up with a tie for third place. But the one man that stood out above the rest was the one holding the clipboard to your right.

Stephon Marbury and the Knicks might still be haggling over the details, but there's little doubt that a divorce is coming soon. So what then? Is he really so poisonous that there's not a single team in the league willing to take a flyer on him?

I don't think so. Playing for one of the league's most dysfuctional franchises in the country's biggest media market can make anybody look bad. I'm not trying to absolve Marbury of fanning the flames, but there are a lot of players around the league who are just as much of a head case but manage to fly under the radar simply because they don't play in New York.

Plus, when he does hit the market, he'll almost certainly be on his best behavior in hopes of salvaging his reputation. And with the Knicks on the hook for most of his salary, he'll likely sign for a prorated share of the veteran's minimum. Despite all the controversy surrounding him the last few years, he'd be a low-risk gamble, especially on a team with strong locker room personalities willing to keep him in his place.

Rook Check takes a look at the progress of NBA Rookies throughout the season.

Heat rookie Michael Beasley was the second overall pick in this year's draft, and with that lofty pick comes some lofty expectations. Beasley was in the starting lineup for the first 15 games of his NBA career, averaging around 14 points and five rebounds per game at the power forward spot.

With the Heat facing the tandem of Shaquille O'Neal and Amare Stoudemire, coach Erik Spoelstra felt a lineup change was in order, and started Joel Anthony at center while moving Udonis Haslem to the power forward spot. This left Beasley to come off the bench for the first time in his career, the expectation being that he would still find a way to contribute. Unfortunately, he did not.

Beasley played just 13 minutes, and was held scoreless, going 0-for-5 from the field. Afterwards, he admitted that coming off the bench was a difficult adjustment, saying he was "lost" and "confused" about what his role was. Beasley's move to the bench appeared to be motivated by the game's matchups, but something Spoelstra said after the game made it seem like there was something Beasley could be doing to earn more minutes.

On Wednesday, Michael Beasley experienced his first official "welcome to the NBA" moment. A man amongst boys in college, Beasley lasted just 45 minutes into his first NBA practice before leaving with a chest injury:

Beasley was struck in the chest by an inadvertent elbow during a defensive drill about 45 minutes into Miami's first summer-league workout session Wednesday, and the No. 2 overall pick in last week's NBA draft was taken to a doctor for observation.

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said the move was strictly precautionary and should not affect Beasley's availability for Miami's five-games-in-five-days run through the Orlando summer league, which opens Monday.

"He took a shot to the chest," Spoelstra said. "He probably could have finished if it was the regular season or something like that, but we just wanted to be safe."

Spoelstra isn't sure who knocked Beasley out of commission, but I'm not surprised a meaningless workout in July got so "inadvertantly" physical. The summer league isn't a bunch of veterans who know how to pace themselves; no, it's mostly a bunch of over-eager youngsters and journeymen trying to catch a coach's eye -- and what can be more impressive than out-working the No. 2 pick? Yeah, it's fine line -- actually knocking the golden boy out of commission won't earn anyone bonus points with the coaching staff -- but Beasley still went from being the big man on campus to a marked man overnight.

Lost in the recent crush of stories about players partying (or not partying), coaches getting fired (or not fired), and legends having some serious skeletons in their closets (sorry Mailman, but there's no alternative scenario to bail you out here) was an interesting sidenote about new Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra.

As it turns out, Spoelstra isn't just the youngest coach in the NBA right now, but he's also apparently the first Asian-American to crack the head-coaching ranks in any of the three major sports leagues (NBA, NFL, MLB). Wikipedia lists Spoelstra's mother as Filipino, and in a Sun-Sentinel story by Ira Winderman, the 39-year-old wunderkind refers to himself as "Dutch-Irish-Filipino."

The "first Asian-American pro coach" story angle was enthusiastically reported by the blog Rice Daddies, and their sense of pride is understandable. Prior to ex-Heat coach Pat Riley naming Spoelstra as his replacement, the only Asian-American of note in the NBA was former Heat guard Rex Walters ('93-'00), who is half-Japanese.

Asian-Americans could previously take a small sense of pride in Chinese imports like Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian succeeding in the NBA, but a big man making a pro roster just isn't the same as a skill player or a coach making it in the L. Like swine scrounging for truffles, NBA teams have historically been adept at sniffing out 7-footers from overseas (Uwe Blab and Frederic Weis come to mind). But the deck is at least slightly stacked against an outsider trying to make it as a point guard (just ask Tony Parker) or a coach, which is why, even though he's from the U.S., Spoelstra's hiring is a small breakthrough for Asian-American sports fans.