FanHouse ErikSpoelstra

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's night of head-bursting box scores, the nine steals earned by Mario Chalmers got only a spot of mainstream attention. Only one player turned out nine picks in a game in '07-08 -- Chris Paul, who had 10 extra minutes of work to rob the Mavericks last February. But the Chalmers thievery explosion against Philadelphia isn't necessarily a complete lie: in Miami's other three games, Chalmers has six more steals. And it's all a part of Heat coach Erik Spoelstra's master plan.

Spoelstra has developed an attacking, active defense for the extremely athletic Heat, putting the team through a long, grueling Monday practice devoted entirely to perfecting improving it. It's worked terrifically in two of Miami's game: the Heat forced 25 Philadelphia turnovers on Wednesday, and 25 against Sacramento last Friday. Overall, Miami is second in the league in defensive turnover rate, up from ninth in '07-08. Spoelstra definitely has the roster for the plot. Dwyane Wade has played the passing lanes well his whole career, and Shawn Marion has quick, quick hands.

But it also might be a ploy of necessity: Miami has two true centers, so to speak: Mark Blount and Joel Anthony. For understandable reasons, those guys are combining for fewer than 15 minutes a game. Udonis Haslem is a star defender ... at the power forward. Protecting his neck against the bigger teams of the league is a smart move made possible by the stabby hands of Chalmers, Marion and Wade on the perimeter.

One of the more intriguing questions floating around basketblog circles this summer has concerned Miami's frontcourt rotation. Shawn Marion has taken up permanent residency on the trade block, but most rumors involving Matrix have died before going public. It really does look like Marion will be in Miami to start the year.

So with longtime Heat forward Udonis Haslem (the team's best defender over the past few years), No. 2 pick Michael Beasley (a popular R.O.Y. choice) and Marion (one of the better defenders in the league, and an explosive match for Dwyane Wade) all needing minutes ... what does Erik Spoelstra do? Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald gets some hints from the rookie coach.

Spoelstra wants to use an undersized frontcourt of Udonis Haslem, Michael Beasley and Shawn Marion "at times, but it will depend on the matchup. I don't know about [using it] in large doses. I feel comfortable with Udonis playing some minutes at" center. He said he hasn't decided whether to open games with a traditional center (Mark Blount or Jamaal Magloire) or the smaller lineup with Haslem at center.

If Haslem starts at power forward, Beasley would come off the bench, because Spoelstra said he sees Beasley as a power forward "right now." (He said he's undecided whether Beasley will start.) He's equally comfortable with Marion at either forward spot.

There you go. I see no practical reason not to roll with the small line-up: Marion is an elite rebounder at power forward, and would be a 25-30% better rebounder than any other small forward in the league assuming his performance maintains at age 30. Haslem is a stellar rebounding forward, and would be at the lower end of average as a center. Beasley projects to be an elite rebounder.

Unless someone taught Blount how to defend this summer, or Magloire sold his soul, there's no way Miami's small line takes something off the table, save maybe a prospective bench scoring boost Beasley could offer.

Both the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel report the Heat have reached agreement on a two-year contract for mystical swingman Dorell Wright, pictured here discussing dinner plans with Pat Riley. Ira Winderman of the Sun-Sentinel indicates Wright will make about $2.9 million this year, and roughly the same in 2009-10.

That's not wild money in any sense of the word ... it's half the NBA average salary. So is Wright half an NBA average player? He can be better than that, though he's barely shown it over the past two seasons. He's now had two fair chances with the Heat: he saw 20 minutes per game in 2006-07 (he did nothing with those minutes) and 25 minutes/game in 2007-08 (he did almost nothing). One would assume he'll have a shot for similar minutes under Erik Spoelstra, though Dwyane Wade's health, Michael Beasley's versatility and Yakhouba Diawara's (yes I said Yakhouba Diawara!) presence could shrink those.

Wright has two key abilities: he's one of the best rebounders under 6'8 in the entire league (he's a better boarder than some 7-foot power forwards) and he blocks an inordinate amount of shots for a glorified two-guard. He's an awfully limited scorer who almost never seems to know what to do with the ball, he has completely abandoned his jumper a la Jason Kidd -- he's basically invisible on offense. It's hard for even bench players to survive in today's NBA with those limitations. It's a scorer's game, and Wright really cannot score.

But if ... if Wright can get a dollop of confidence in his game -- maybe from Spoelstra, who has been on the bench Wright's entire career -- he can turn into an average or slightly below-average scorer. Depending on the Heat's moves, he could be paired with able shooter Udonis Haslem or potential elite scorer Beasley in the second unit. Having a bigger dog there every night could relieve the pressure and get Wright the space he needs. We assume he hits open shots in practice. Transferring that ability to the game is the only way Wright can finally get past the "potential" tag and become an actual NBA player. We wish him luck.