Millsap Dominates Bosh And Miami Heat For Utah Jazz Victory and Career-High 46 Points

Miami, Florida No, the chances of the Miami Heat going 82 - 0 for the season have long passed. However, at a record of 5 - 3 during this first month of the NBA season, the vaunted Miami "superteam" is on pace for a record of 51 - 31, not even matching the record of the Cleveland Cavalier team that won a league best 61 games and brought Lebron the honor of NBA MVP. Experts around the league doubt that even exceeding the Cavs win total from last season will bring another MVP Award to Lebron because he is not even the focal point or best player on this season's version of the Heat.

Chris Bosh has been exposed as a soft defender and weak rebounder.

The Utah Jazz took their talents to South Beach and handed the Miami Heat their first home loss of the season behind a career night for power forward Paul Millsap who scored 46 points in the overtime victory.  

Millsap was efficient; his career-high 46 points were scored on 19 for 28 shooting from the field, including shooting 3 for 3 from 3-point range. Millsap outscored the Miami Heat starting frontcourt, including Bosh (17 points), Lebron James (20 points), and rookie Joel Anthony (4 points).

In the first 8 games of the season, the Miami Heat's greatest weakness has been exposed. After having a roster that was completely gutted during the off season to make way for the Miami Thrice experiment, it seems that the filler players that were obtained to form the rest of the Miami Heat roster are not the only concern for the Heat.

For all their talent and skill, the Miami Heat front line, lead by Chris Bosh, is soft defensively and on the boards. Chris Bosh was the best player on a bad team with the Toronto Raptors, and he was able to accrue strong stats during mostly meaningless games. Bosh never led his Toronto Raptors team to the playoffs.

In the loss earlier in the week to the New Orleans Hornets, Bosh grabbed one rebound in 34 minutes of play. ONE REBOUND!

We saw in tonight's game that the Miami Heat plan to keep Lebron James back to help on the defensive boards. Lebron tallied a triple-double (20 points, 14 assists, 11 rebounds) because of the strategy, but ultimately, the Heat lost the game. Going forward, we will see if other teams, especially teams that can dominate on the front line, continue to press the advantage to beat the Heat.

The teams that Miami is hoping to beat in the playoffs to play for the NBA Championship are teams that are powerful up front: Los Angeles, Boston, Orlando, New Orleans, and Chicago, to name a few. At this point, the Miami Heat are a fool's pick to win the NBA Championship.