After the Miami Heat’s loss to the Dallas Mavericks yesterday, the Heat staged a players-only meeting. Lebron James said he and his teammates aired their thoughts about the team’s 9-8 start. Chris Bosh told Yahoo!, “We were just looking at each other and being honest.”

They were honest? Well, the truth hurts. The following account of last night’s meeting may or may not be fabricated.

*****

Bosh: “First, guys, I just want to apologize. I know I’m not who you thought I was. I’m a little bit of a fraud.”

Joel Anthony: “I want to apologize, too. I’m not a fraud, but I am a thief. The pay me $18 million and I can barely make a layup. Also, I’m a 6’9 center who averages 3.1 rebounds per game and has no chance defending a halfway-decent big man.”

Dwyane Wade: “Fall down seven times, stand up eight. And after you stand up that eighth time, make sure you surround yourself with superstars who make you play worse.”

Bosh: “Are you calling me a superstar?”

Wade: “Ah, right. I meant ‘surround yourself with a superstar’ — singular — ‘who makes you play worse.”

Bosh: “Alright, that’s more like it.”

Lebron: “What should I do, Dwyane? Should I shoulder-bump Erik Spoelstra? Should I call Mo Williams and tell him I’m sorry? Should I be who you want me to be?”

Carlos Arroyo: “What are you guys all upset about? This season’s going perfectly. I’m shooting 61.9 [bleeping] percent from three-point range!”

Udonis Haslem: “Oh, Carlos.You clowns are a whole bunch of studio gangsters.”

Eddie House (giving himself the middle finger): “I told everyone before the season, middle finger to all the haters. And I’m a hater — I HATE playing with you bums.”

Erick Dampier: “Never fear, Erick Dampier is here! I am your savior!”

Lebron: “Ericka, we’re only speaking the truth in this meeting.”

Dampier: “Oh. Well, in that case, at least I’m better than Joel Anthony.”

Anthony: “Touche.”

Lebron: “What should we do? Should we fire Spoelstra? Should we beg Riley to return to the bench? Should we just clear the deck and start over? What should we do?”

Haslem: “I vote fire Spoelstra.”

Wade: “Yeah, me too.”

Team (in chorus, except Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who remains quiet): “Fi-re Spoel-stra! Fi-re Spoel-stra! Fi-re Spoel-stra!”

Lebron: “Big Z, what’s wrong? Do you actually want Spoelstra to stay?”

Ilgauskas: “God no! Who would want that? I’m just worried by a comparison I’ve heard a lot recently. I don’t look like Voldemort from Harry Potter, do I?”

[Team remains quiet]

Ilgauskas: “Guys?”

[Silence remains]

Ilgauskas: “GUYS?”

Wade: “So, umm, we’ve decided to fire Spoelstra. We’re making progress. The next step: learning how to play together.”

Lebron: “I don’t want to play with you anymore. Playing with you is like playing getting the kiss of death from a dementor. It just sucks the life right out of me. I miss Anderson Varejao and Anthony Parker, and Mo Williams. And I don’t want to be a point guard. And I don’t want to be a power forward. And I don’t want to play 44 minutes against the Boston Celtics. I just want to laugh and have fun. Is that too much to ask for?”

Bosh: “Yeah, this isn’t what I bargained for either. [Bosh pauses, thinking about what the season was supposed to bring.] Maybe I should have stayed in Toronto.”

Wade: “Yeah, that would have been better. Then we could have picked up Carlos Boozer, or kept Michael Beasley, or actually signed a point guard who’s worth a damn.”

Arroyo: “But I’m shooting 61.9% from threes!”

Wade: “File one under ‘fluke’.”

Mario Chalmers: “I’m not half bad, Dwyane.”

Wade: “No offense, Mario, but this is for players only.”

Lebron: “What should we do? Should we remind you we’ve never done this before? Should we pretend we still have confidence in each other? Should we tell you we don’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the 1996 Bulls? Hi, Mike. [Lebron winks, eats a Ballpark Frank.] What should we do?”

Wade: “We should hope Pat Riley has answers.”

Udonis Haslem: “No, guys. I’ve got a better idea. Voldemo– I mean, Zydrunas: We need the elder wand.”

What if, in July, you told Pat Riley his SuperTeam would start the season 8-6? And that he would have already signed and released Jerry Stackhouse? And that he would resort to hiring Erick(-a) Dampier?  And that Joel Anthony (and his newly-minted $18 million contract) would be one big epic fail? And that Chris Bosh would be the league’s laughingstock? And that Lebron James and Dwyane Wade would play like mortals?

And then, after all that, Udonis Haslem would tear a ligament in his foot, and perhaps miss the entire season?

I imagine Riley would be thinking to himself, “Well, looks like it’s ‘Fire Spoelstra’ time.”

I knew Haslem’s torn ligaments would take awhile to heal, but this? Perhaps a full season? For the Heat, this hurts like a kick to the nads. Only if a kick to the nads hurt for four months or so.

Erick(-a) Dampier is not the answer. Moving Anthony (and his previously mentioned $18 million deal) to fourth-string center is not the answer. The return of Mike Miller is not the answer. The loss of Haslem, perhaps for the entire season, will reverberate in Miami and throughout the league.

Haslem wasn’t just the Heat’s sixth man, he was their heart and soul. He was the one player up front to be counted on, the one Miami frontcourt member who didn’t shy away from contact or the spotlight. When Haslem called Paul Pierce a “studio gangster,” I’m sure some Celtics fans were upset. But Haslem wasn’t just taking a shot at Pierce, he was sticking up for his team. He was standing his ground in an attempt to lead his teammates, to say, You know what guys? We’ve gotta fight back. We can’t get punked like that.

Who’s going to stand up for the Heat next time? James? He just wants to have fun. Chris Bosh? He just wants to chill. Dwyane Wade? He just wants to laugh off losses.

So who will it be? Dampier? Child, please. Juwan Howard? Tough to be an enforcer while chalking up DNP’s most of the time. Jamaal Magloire? For Miami’s sake, I hope it doesn’t come to that.

What does this mean for the Celtics? It means the Heat, who already had serious issues, have now found their most serious issue yet. It means Orlando might be the only real competition for top seed in the East. It means the Heat could be an absurdly dangerous 4th- or 5th-seed in the playoffs. It means, well, not as much as you might think.

The Celtics are fighting their own battle right now. If they can avoid boredom, the regular season will be a success. If they don’t avoid boredom, the regular season will be a long one. At some point in the playoffs, the Celtics will meet the East’s best teams. Whether those teams are Orlando, Chicago, Miami or — hell, who knows? — Indiana, Boston would be better off playing them with homecourt advantage.

So yes, losing Haslem hurts Miami. A lot.

But for Boston, the path remains unchanged.

There’s a little rivalry brewing, eh? Of course, a rivalry has to consist of two mostly equal teams. I suspect that part will come, sooner rather than later.

The reasons for the rivalry, I think, are clear. The Celtics resent the focus everyone has paid to the Heat. They hated that the Heat were the near-unanimous preseason choice to win the Eastern Conference, and they felt especially disrespected when the media began calling the Heat “The Big Three.” The C’s spent the summer saying they could care less about Miami’s new-look roster, but let’s not get it twisted: they care. A lot. And they want blood.

After last night’s game, Paul Pierce tweeted, “It’s been a pleasure to bring my talents to south beach now on to Memphis.” Shot fired. Shot connected. Lebron, suck it.

But the postgame bullets weren’t done. Udonis Haslem shot back today.

“Paul who?” Haslem told reporters at Friday’s afternoon practice, according to Michael Wallace of ESPN’s The Heat Index. “Man, ain’t nobody paying them dudes no attention, man. You know what studio gangster is? Look up that, look up the definition of studio gangster. I’m here to play basketball. First of all, I don’t tweet. So I wouldn’t know what he tweeted if you guys didn’t tell me.”

Studio gangster, in case you were wondering, means a fake tough guy. My initial response? A knock-knock joke:

Me: Knock-knock.

Haslem: Who’s there?

Me: Paul.

Haslem: Paul who?

Me: Paul who dropped 25 points on your team last night and knocked your ass out of last year’s playoffs.

My second response? I kind of like what Haslem said. If anybody else on the Heat had said it, it would have been different. I would have told them to fight their battles on the court, not off it. But Haslem’s as tough as nails. He’s one of the few Heat players I know will never back down from any challenge. And he’s letting the Celtics know: it’s not always going to be as easy as it was last night. We’re coming after you, and we aren’t afraid of you.

Haslem’s also sending a message to his own teammates: fuck the Celtics. We can be tough guys, too. We can’t let them run all over us.

A rivalry, huh? This is fun. After last night’s game, the only Heat player any Celtic shook hands with was Eddie House. All I could think was one thing:

This is how basketball’s supposed to be.

Here I am thinking that the police are just doing their jobs, pulling people over for speeding and finding illegal substances in their cars, but they’re really just targeting high-profile NBA players. It all makes sense now. If Haslem had been a normal guy the police would have just found the weed and told him to have a jolly time with it. Right, Mr. Lawyer? Anyway, I love the good ol’ “That weed isn’t mine, it’s my friend’s!” trick. 60% of the time, it works every time.

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It's all smiles for these three for now.

Ira Winderman, reporter for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, reports that the Heat’s roster is a lot closer to being finalized than we think. Here is Winderman’s list of the 15 players he expects to play for the Miami Heat next season: Read more »

Yuck. Derek Fisher.

Another day, another step up for the Celtics’ main competition. Udonis Haslem has decided to re-sign with the Miami Heat, and he’s not the only veteran re-signing with a championship contender. (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Udonis Haslem will be back with the Miami Heat next season.

The veteran power forward confirmed his return Monday afternoon to the Sun Sentinel in a text message that read: “Turned down full mid level from Dallas and Denver. See u next season.”

Instead of packages from other teams that could have reached $34 million over five seasons, Haslem, 30, is expected to sign off on a four-year Heat package at about a third of that total, although details still are being sorted out.

Haslem and Bosh don’t exactly work together in a starting lineup – trust me, that combination doesn’t quite have Dwight Howard shaking in his boots. Still, Haslem is a hell of a signing, a solid vet, and the first of who-knows-how-many players who will take a pay cut in order to play with the Three A-me-goes. Haslem also had this gem about Mike Miller: “That’s my boy from day one. . . That’s my college roommate. He’s like Dwyane is to me, just a different color.”

While Haslem signed in Miami, Fisher signed his name to the dotted line in LA. Let’s forget the fact that he just had a solid playoffs and hit a number of clutch shots: For most of this past season, Fisher looked like a fossil. By the end of his new deal, he’ll be 39 years old. So I’m not too worried about Fish — he has to get old at some point, right? Doesn’t he? Oh damn it, I’ll admit it. Fisher helps the Lakers chances next season, for sure… but I can still hope he ages more quickly than Keith Richards.

No matter how quickly he ages, one of Fisher’s main reasons for returning to LA made me puke in my mouth a little: “At the end of the day, there’s one person I could not turn away from. Kobe Bryant asked me to stay.” Ew. Sorry for ruining your day by including that quote, guys. Kobe is the devil to us, just a different color.