The Miami Heat can certainly relate to what the Los Angeles Lakers are going through.
While the media frenzy is more prominent in Los Angeles, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade think the criticism of the Lakers is nothing comparable to what they experienced in 2010.
“No one will ever be able to compare what we went through,” James said to the Miami Herald. “Even though they’re not winning and they’re losing a lot of games, it’s still nowhere near what we went through…That level of magnitude was nowhere near where ours was two years ago. Nothing. Nothing compares to it.”
The Lakers are off to a surprising 15-20 start after adding perennial all-stars Dwight Howard and Steve Nash in the off-season.
They came into the season as pre-season favourites in the Western Conference but have not clicked at all thus far.
“It’s the Lakers,” Wade said. “They’re America’s team. I keep saying it. They’re the standard of what the NBA has been for years, Boston and the Lakers. But the Lakers are in L.A., the big market. So, from that standpoint, you understand it. You get it.”
The Heat went through similar struggles when James and Chris Bosh joined the Heat two seasons ago but Wade believes the media was much tougher on Miami at the time.
James spurned his former team on national TV on a show called “The Decision” where he publicly announced that he was ‘taking his talents to South Beach’ and joining the Heat.
“Because of everything that happened in 2010 with offseason signings, it was, automatically, just a lot of negative things that was said about us,” Wade told the Miami newspaper. “[Los Angeles] didn’t go through that at the beginning. They didn’t go through anything negative about bringing those guys together, so ours started off bad and it stayed bad for a while, and then we got better.”
Wade says some of the new Lakers players probably aren’t accustomed to the type of pressure and scrutiny they have been under after the team’s rocky start.
“I know [Kobe Bryant] understands it,” Wade explained. “That’s the nature of the beast out in L.A. I don’t know if every player that comes through there understands what you’re getting yourself into when you walk through those Lakers doors.”
The Heat eventually turned the corner and won the Eastern Conference after a sluggish start in their first season together. They lost to the Dallas Mavericks that season but were able to quiet the critics with a NBA championship the following year.
The Lakers have lost five in a row heading into Friday’s action and currently sit in 11th place in the Western Conference.
