EIGHT-MAN ROTATION
Pos	Player	Key Stat	Skinny
PG	Tim Hardaway	7.3 APG	Career-low in assists, steals
SG	Voshon Lenard	12 games	Spot shooter can't create own shot
SF	Jamal Mashburn	24 games	159 games in last four years!
PF	P.J. Brown	11.4 PPG	With Thorpe around might be moving
C	Alonzo Mourning	3.91 BPG	Second in MVP voting behind Mailman
PF	Otis Thorpe	.545 FG %	Banger fits right in with Riley system
SF	C. Weatherspoon	8.1 PPG	Not in prime anymore, but contributes
SG	Dan Majerle	68 threes	May start if Lenard's not healthy

		The Heat need confidence after losing a lot of big series together. The players haven't changed much. They added Otis Thorpe, who is now out six weeks with a thumb injury, and lost Terry Porter in the backcourt. It's the best roster in the East, but they haven't proved it yet. The Heat have the best point guard in Tim Hardaway, the best center in Alonzo Mourning, and a terrific power forward in P.J. Brown. They also have Jamal Mashburn and Voshon Lenard. They should be the powerful team in the East along with the Knicks and the Pacers, but they have to win big games at the end of the season.

That was Heat coach Pat Riley's attitude after Miami became just the second No. 1 seed in NBA history to fall to a No. 8 seed in the first round of the playoffs with a five-game loss to the hated (and eventual Eastern Conference champion) New York Knicks. The loss was devastating, and after suffering an embarrassing first-round defeat to the Knicks for the second straight year, nearly everyone thought Riley was going to do some major housecleaning over the summer.

Uh, not quite.

"I don't care what anybody says about our team," Riley says. "I'm committed to this team, and I believe in this team. I love these guys, and we have another year to find out what we can do."

And though the team has sputtered in the postseason in recent years, the fact remains the Heat has won the last three Atlantic Division titles and has posted a .667 winning percentage over the last two seasons. That fact alone was enough to convince Riley to stay pat with the lineup he has in place.

"People don't understand how difficult it is to be a winner," Riley says. "I'm not going to sacrifice the possibility of winning big for the one-time shot of winning it all. It's not time yet (to break up this team). It's very premature."

Not that Riley didn't have the chance to retool. A number of teams were interested in making a deal for forward P.J. Brown, but Riley refused to trade one of the most valuable players on his roster. Forward Jamal Mashburn and guard Voshon Lenard were shopped around some, but the Heat couldn't put together a deal it liked and both stayed in south Florida.

In fact, the only major addition to the team comes in the form of ancient Otis Thorpe, who signed as a free agent from Washington. The 37-year-old Thorpe will miss the start of the season with a broken thumb, but his veteran leadership and experience will only make Miami stronger.

Another year older, another year wiser, the 1999-2000 Heat look a lot like the group that slumped off the floor last May after getting eliminated by the Big Apple Bad Boys. But being another year older and bringing back the same nucleus of last year's division champs don't concern Riley. In fact, he revels in the situation.

"We're not an old, graybeard team," Riley says. "That's Utah, a vintage wine. From a talent standpoint, well, we're going to find out once and for all now, aren't we?"

	Player to watch
	Mashburn When Jamal Mashburn is on, he's scoring points in bunches and grabbing a few boards. Problem is he's seldom healthy. He's the wildcard between the inside presence of Alonzo Mourning and the outside shooting of Tim Hardaway. There's little scoring depth off the bench on this team, so Mashburn is a big key. Pat Riley needs at least 17 points a night from him.

Point guard
Last season, Hardaway was one of only three point guards to average at least 17 points and seven assists (Stephon Marbury and Gary Payton were the others). But come playoff time, Hardaway was slowed by injuries to both knees and had a nightmare of a series vs. the Knicks, averaging just 9.0 points a game and shooting a pathetic 26.8% from the field.

"I played terrible," Hardaway remembers. "I was embarrassed to go out to eat dinner. I didn't feel comfortable seeing the Miami Heat fans and them asking me what went wrong and me having to tell them, 'I (screwed) up.' I felt I let people down."

Hardaway seemed to regain his old form playing for the U.S. national team in the Olympic qualifying tournament in July. And after undergoing surgery on his knees and getting plenty of rest, he is refreshed, both in body and mind.

"I'm completely healthy-mentally and physically," he says. "I'm back to the Tim Hardaway-style of playing aggressively, going to the basket."

The Heat badly need vintage Hardaway if it is going to push deep into the playoffs. And at 33 years of age, Hardaway is aiming for a big year to prove he's worth a new contract far more lucrative than his current incentive-laden deal that expires next summer.

Riley would love nothing more than to give Hardaway more rest this season, but that might be difficult without a seasoned backup. With the loss of Porter, veteran Rex Walters has emerged as the front-runner for the backup point guard job, even though he seldom played the position in his two previous years in Miami.

Shooting guard
Despite the fact shooting guard is generally regarded as Miami's biggest weakness, Riley did little to upgrade the position this offseason. Lenard showed great potential in 1997-98, when he averaged 12.6 points and ranked sixth in the NBA with 153 three-pointers. But the strides he made two years ago were ruined after he missed the first two months of last season after leg surgery and played only sporadically when he returned.

However, Lenard is considered the favorite to start ahead of Dan Majerle, but the starting job will not come with an extended warranty. Miami discussed dealing Lenard and Terry Mills to Detroit in exchange for Jerry Stackhouse this summer, but the deal never materialized. Then in August, the Heat reportedly offered forward Clarence Weatherspoon to Washington for swingman Calbert Cheaney, but Cheaney nixed the deal.

At 6-4, Lenard is undersized defending taller opponents such as 6-6 Allan Houston and 6-7 Reggie Miller, but Riley believes Lenard has made strides defensively.

"I feel good where I am," Lenard says. "I'm a starter in this league."

Majerle excelled defensively last season but averaged just 7.0 points on 39.6% shooting from the floor.

Small forward
In each of his first two full years with the Heat, Mashburn has been bit by the injury bug just as he was beginning to fulfill expectations. And in both years, he returned only to underperform in the playoffs against New York. Despite Mashburn's troubles, Riley insists the Heat hasn't given up on him.

"Mash had a great summer," Riley says. "He worked more diligently than any other player on the team. He has worked on making quicker decisions and quicker moves to the basket. I just hope his injuries are behind him."

Mashburn averaged 19.2, 24.1 and 23.4 points per game in his first three years in the league in Dallas and seemed to be on the verge of stardom. But since coming to the Heat, he has seen his scoring drop off to a mere 13.5 points a game. The former Kentucky All-American doesn't get as many shots in the Heat offense as he would like, leading Mashburn to say his style is no longer conducive to averaging 25 points a night. But Riley isn't expecting that. What both men would like is consistency.

Behind Mashburn, Miami has a logjam at small forward, with Weatherspoon, Mark Strickland, Keith Askins and first-round pick Tim James vying for a spot on the court. Weatherspoon and Strickland figure to get the most playing time from that mix.

Power forward
Considered among the best defensive power forwards in basketball, Brown had his best year offensively last season, averaging 11.4 points and hitting the mid-range jump shot on a regular basis. But Brown needs to improve his rebounding, which dropped off to 6.9 a game last year.

His value to the Heat, however, goes beyond statistics.

"He just does a lot of the little things that need to be done," Mourning says. "He is very, very, very valuable to our team."

Riley obviously feels the same way. Brown, 30, was mentioned in trade rumors all summer, but Riley steadfastly refused to part with him. His belief in the talents of his forward go a long way towards giving Brown confidence and drive to excel. Between Brown, Thorpe and Mourning, the Heat perhaps are blessed with the East's best rotation at the power positions.

Center
After earning Defensive Player of the Year honors and finishing second only to Utah's Karl Malone in MVP balloting, Mourning heads into the 1999-2000 season as the undisputed best big man in the Eastern Conference. He ranked first in the NBA in blocked shots (3.9), fourth in field goal percentage (.511) and sixth in rebounds (11.0) and finished in the top 15 in scoring (20.1). But for as impressive as those numbers are, Mourning and Riley still see potential for growth.

"There's another level he could get to-a championship-performer level," Riley says. "To make sure his free throw percentage goes up to the mid-70s, to make sure his rebounding is above 11 a game. To block a shot a game more."

Riley's knock on Mourning's free throw shooting is certainly justified. The 65.2% he shot from the charity stripe won't help the Heat win a title, and his assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.6-to-3 needs improvement. Still, with Mourning manning the middle, Miami has the advantage over virtually every other team in the conference, if not the league.

The Heat has not had a reliable backup center since trading Isaac Austin to the Clippers in February 1997. But Thorpe, once he recovers from a fractured thumb, should help fill that void.

Coaching
The Heat extended Riley's contract for six years during the offseason, and Riley said he expects to coach in Miami through the end of the new deal. He has done a terrific job building a once-moribund franchise into a contender and has consistently gotten veteran players to perform.

But Riley's mission will be incomplete if he cannot take this franchise to an NBA Finals. Riley won four rings with the Lakers in the 1980s, but he hasn't sipped championship champagne since 1988.

However, Riley claims the title drought doesn't bother him at all.

"There's no void, because I truly believe it's going to happen again," Riley says. "I want to see Alonzo and Hardaway and all these guys wear rings. That would put a great smile on my face."