MIAMI -- In preparing for a 4½-day trip to Atlanta, the Miami Heat charter flight was loaded Saturday with luggage, uniforms, sneakers, tape and all the things players will want and need heading into the first two games of their Eastern Conference playoff series.
Party attire was optional, and highly discouraged.
Ask any player which NBA cities are the most fun to visit, and Atlanta quickly comes up. The scene, the nightlife, it's a tantalizing combination.
And this week, it's forbidden to Heat players.
Not by decree of the coaches -- but by captains Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem.
"I think it's the best leadership and the strongest leadership that these guys have shown here in a Heat uniform," Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said. "That's the most powerful. We've talked about it all the time as a staff. Sometimes that can fall on, you know, not deaf ears, but when your veteran guys and your captains say that, I think that's a beautiful thing."
Wade and Haslem are the only rotation players left from Miami's 2006 NBA championship team. They endured a playoff sweep in 2007 and the free fall to the NBA basement last season, so this year's postseason opportunity is particularly meaningful to them both.
So they decided long before the playoff matchup with Atlanta was known that wherever they were heading, a "no-go-out policy" would be in effect.
"The veteran guys before us, when we came in to the league like Brian Grant, Eddie Jones, that's what they believed in," said Wade, referring to two former Heat captains. "So this is the core of what we know. This is focus time. This isn't play time. Play time is the summer. You can do what you want in the regular season, too. Not now. We're the leaders, so we're just going from what we know."
Teammates didn't mind.
Wade is the NBA's scoring champion, and Haslem is considered by most as the hardest-playing guy in the Heat locker room.
What they say goes.
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