Heat expect to improve after disappointing finish

MIAMI -- Their arena was dark and quiet Tuesday, matching the collective mood of the Miami Heat.

Players still stinging from a Game 7 loss in the Eastern Conference finals congregated for the last time in the locker room, listened to team president Pat Riley talk about excellence always needs time to build, then limped in their different directions to begin an offseason none of them were ready for.

"I haven't been to sleep yet," Heat guard Damon Jones said, 18 hours after the season ended with an 88-82 home loss to Detroit. "It's tough to end this way."

It was a sleepless night for many Heat players, who considered themselves the odds-on favorite to win the NBA title.

The dream unraveled in a haze of injuries. Shaquille O'Neal injured his thigh on April 10 to start the team's worst run of health problems all season. By the end, all five starters were hurting; O'Neal's superstar teammate, Dwyane Wade, needed two painkilling injections just to play Game 7 against the Pistons.

Wade said he'll need seven weeks to recover from the strained right rib muscle in Game 5 of the conference finals. The injury is so severe he needed an hour and several attempts just to get out of bed Tuesday morning. He was one of the few Miami players who seemed pleased with a 59-win year.

"I'm just excited," Wade said. "Even though this season didn't end the way we wanted it to end, we can't control destiny. We can't control what happened any more. And it was great."

Until the end, it absolutely was.

Between O'Neal's arrival from the Los Angeles Lakers and the emergence of Wade into an elite NBA guard, the Heat were closer to the finals than ever. They won the Southeast Division title by 14 games, swept New Jersey and Washington in the first two playoff rounds, and led the Pistons by six points midway through the fourth quarter of Game 7.

But it slipped away.

O'Neal felt he didn't get the ball enough down the stretch; Jones agreed with him, and took the blame for that on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Pistons closed the game on a 20-8 run, showing the poise of a champion -- and, coach Stan Van Gundy hopes, teaching the Heat a valuable lesson.

Van Gundy said every team that ascended to the NBA title in the last quarter-century took lumps along the way, but grew as a franchise by keeping its most integral players together as a unit.

"You have to learn from last night and grow from it and make this, even out of the disappointment, make you stronger and better and make it a step toward the next thing," Van Gundy said. "It just hasn't been done where you put a core together and you win it in the first year."