Miami Heat: 3 biggest disappointments from the 2018-19 NBA season

Having missed the postseason for the third time in five seasons, here are the three biggest disappointments for the Miami Heat in 2018-19.

While they have may have finished the year in style with a proper farewell for franchise legend Dwyane Wade, the 2018-19 NBA season was nonetheless a huge disappointment for the Miami Heat.

Team president Pat Riley firmly stated as much at his recent end-of-season press conference:

"“This has not come together the way that I thought it would. I thought this year for sure in my mind that we would be in the top half of the Eastern Conference. Fourth, fifth, that would be a step forward.”"

Despite the departure of LeBron James to the Eastern Conference, the Heat weren’t able to improve upon their 44-38 record of 2017-18, which led to a highly competitive first round playoff loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.

Instead, they returned an underwhelming 39-43 record, placing the Heat in 10th in the final standings for the Eastern Conference. While they finished a more than respectable second in opponent points per game, and a commendable seventh in defensive rating, it was at the offensive end of the floor where the Heat had some major struggles.

Overall, they finished 26th in offensive rating, 26th in points per game, 22nd in field goal percentage and dead last in free throw percentage. In fact, leading scorer Josh Richardson‘s 16.6 points per game was the lowest output for the franchise since Rony Seikaly led the team with 16.6 points per game in 1989-90.

While lack of offensive output was a large contributing factor, there were a number of reasons as to why the Heat weren’t able to gift Wade with one final playoff run.

With this in mind, here are the three biggest disappointments for the Heat in 2018-19.