Schedule puts Heat in win-now mode immediately

Sun Sentinel/TNSThe simplistic narrative is that all NBA schedules are the same: 41 at home, 41 on the road, every team in the opposite conference twice, just about every team in the same conference four times. It adds up to 82 and starts at the end of October.But delve deeper into the numbers, into the scheduling itself, and there is no such thing as a typical NBA schedule. Exhibit A is what the Miami Heat have been presented for 2015-16.Early on, there is an abundance of home games, mostly against the league’s lesser half, the NBA’s easiest strength of schedule through Christmas based on last season’s winning percentages.Then, come the second week of January, there essentially is a nuclear winter, 14 of 16 games on the road, including a six-game trip that includes games against the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Clippers and Oklahoma City Thunder (a game that comes on the 11th day of the trip, in the trip’s third time zone).That time frame is when it started to head south last season for the Heat, all the way to the team’s first lottery finish in seven years.But it was before that, before Chris Bosh was lost for the season with blood clots on his lung, Josh McRoberts for the season with his knee injury, before Dwyane Wade’s repeated absences, that the Heat were unable to establish a post-LeBron James foothold.From the early 3-0 start that left the Heat and Houston Rockets as the league’s only undefeated teams at that stage, the record would fall to 5-5, then 9-11, and then spiral to a point where the arrivals of Hassan Whiteside and Goran Dragic left the newcomers as Sisyphus, the inertia of the early struggles too much to overcome.That’s why the uniqueness of what the NBA presented to the Heat on Wednesday cannot be discounted as just another schedule rollout.This time 14 of the first 19 are at home, four more home games than the Heat had in their first 19 last season. While last season’s 20-21 home ledger hardly overwhelmed, it still delivered more than the 17-24 road record.A year ago, the Heat merely were treading water entering camp in the wake of James’ free-agency return to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Two of the prime replacements, McRoberts and Danny Granger, not only weren’t ready for training camp, but also weren’t ready for the start of the regular season.The 2014-15 Heat entered camp with Granger, McRoberts and Shannon Brown, but without a sense of identity. Whiteside still was in camp with the Memphis Grizzlies. Dragic seemingly was an enduring part of the Phoenix Suns’ future.This season’s Heat, by contrast, have been given no time for early-season kinks, not after an opening week that includes the Cavaliers, Rockets and Atlanta Hawks is followed largely by a diet of those who joined the Heat on last season’s lottery stage.If after that opening 19-game run the Heat are 9-10 or 10-9 or something close to that, what follows could again create concern of a Heat lottery pick potentially going to the Philadelphia 76ers (it’s Top 10 protected once again, just like last season, as a result of the 2010 sign-and-trade acquisition of James).For now, the signs are encouraging. Whiteside has been a staple in South Florida this summer. McRoberts is working out regularly back home in Indiana. Amar’e Stoudemire spent time recently working out at AmericanAirlines Arena. Gerald Green has been in town. And Wade has been posting Instagram photos of himself in a cape, at the exact moment the Heat need him to return to something close to his superhero self.Last season, the Heat went into opening night with Shawne Williams as their starting power forward, with Brown, Justin Hamilton and Andre Dawkins as roster components. It was a team still trying to find itself.This season, there will be no such leeway.Because all NBA schedules are not created equally, even if the sum total of games is the same.