Heat Open Title Defense at Home Against the Bulls

A year after closing out the Dallas Mavericks in Game 6 of the NBA Finals, the Miami Heat begin their championship defense Saturday afternoon at AmericanAirlines Arena, opening a first-round series against the Chicago Bulls as the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference. Tip-off is set for 3:30 p.m. on ABC, with the second game in Miami on Tuesday before the series shifts to the United Center.

Pat Riley's team enters the postseason at 44-38, well off the pace it set during last season's title run. Most of the dropoff traces to availability. Dwyane Wade, last year's Finals MVP, missed weeks with a dislocated left shoulder, returning late in the regular season after the Heat had already drifted into the middle of the standings. Shaquille O'Neal lost time of his own to knee soreness and missed the start of the season after offseason surgery. Riley himself stepped away in February for hip and knee surgery, with assistant Ron Rothstein filling in on the bench during his absence.

The core that lifted the Larry O'Brien trophy last June is still in place. Wade, O'Neal, Antoine Walker, James Posey, Jason Williams, Udonis Haslem and Gary Payton are all back in uniform; Eddie Jones rejoined the roster in February after the Memphis buyout. Around Broward, that lineup is the closest thing the spring sports calendar has to a regional shared-experience event, and the team's familiar "WHITE HOT" graphic returns to AmericanAirlines Arena starting Saturday.

Chicago will not make any of it easy. Scott Skiles's Bulls finished 49-33 and went 2-2 against Miami in the regular season, and they bring perhaps the deepest set of perimeter defenders in the East into the matchup. Ben Wallace's offseason move from Detroit gives them a frontcourt body who has won a championship of his own and matches up directly against O'Neal in the post. Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich anchor a wing rotation built to bother Wade.

For the class of 2007, this is the second postseason in a row to start with a real title aspiration attached to the local team — a stretch that, until very recently, was not part of the South Florida sports calendar at all. White t-shirts on every seat, banners along Las Olas, and an arena that has not lost a Heat playoff series since the Eastern Conference Finals last May. Game 1 starts a defense that runs through Chicago first, then either Detroit or Orlando, with everything else still a long way out.