It’s Not Heat, It’s Humility : Miner Loses Miami Starting Job, Not Positive Approach

Sometimes Harold Miner merely wants to be normal.

He doesn’t want to be a prisoner to his dream any more. He doesn’t have to be “Baby Jordan.” He won a dunk contest and it didn’t change his life. He certainly doesn’t need another night coming off Kevin Loughery’s bench, or walking into an empty house a continent away from Inglewood and home.

He thought about it last season when four Miami Heat guards played more than he did.

He’s thinking about it again, even if he’s too polite to say so, having recently lost his starting job.

“Just the whole life,” Miner, 23, said recently, smiling his sad smile. “It’s hard to deal with. Constantly moving around, never knowing where you’re going to be, year in, year out. That makes it hard. I’m a family-oriented-type person. I like to be around my family. Being away from them . . . it’s very hard.

“It’s almost as hard as it was then (1992-93, his rookie season). It’s just that I’m a lot older now, I’m more mature, I’m able to deal with it better but it’s still hard because L.A. is my home.”

Sorry, Harold. Someone has to be different and it’s you.

Even in a star-struck world, normal kids didn’t dream the way you did. Even in a neighborhood where everyone spent his waking hours on the playground, no one matched your devotion. Who else do you know who grew up to be 6 feet 5, 214 pounds, with a pair of magic legs that could carry him aloft, to hover over the basket like some giant bird of prey?

Somebody has to stand out, for better or worse.

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For two years, Miner played behind Steve Smith. Then the Heat made a weird series of deals that sent away Smith and Rony Seikaly and brought in Kevin Willis and Billy Owens.

Once logjammed at shooting guard, the Heat was now logjammed at small forward. But at least Miner was going to get a shot out of it.

“I think Harold is ready to step into a starting berth in the NBA,” Loughery, the Miami coach, said after the Smith deal. “This is a tremendous opportunity for him to do that.

“I think it was always a rush with Harold, coming in. He was very heralded. I think everybody wanted to rush Harold, forgot how young he was. And I think he had to learn the game. And now he’s reached the point where he’s going to get that opportunity. We feel he’s at that level. And now he’s gotta step up and do it.”

Said Seikaly: “It’s been real hard for him. He was in a program (USC) where he was the man. He had to take a back step. It was definitely very hard for him.

“That’s why sometimes he came in and didn’t really play like he should play because he really didn’t have any enthusiasm to play. Because he knew if he came in and missed a couple of jumpers or didn’t play defense well, he’s going to come back out. He always had that leash on his neck.

“We always talked to him because we knew he was so good. Like in practices and stuff like that, he was basically unstoppable. We said, ‘Don’t worry about it, your time is going to come. Just be patient, keep working.’

“Finally his time has come. And now that he can just play and he could take as many shots as he wants, he’s gonna up his game. He’s a very good defensive player when he wants to play.”

Wants to play? No one wants it the way Harold Miner does.

Last summer, after his nothing season, he came home and worked with a zeal that frightened his mother.

“She was telling me, ‘Calm down, slow down,’ ” Miner says. “I was working eight, nine hours a day in the summer, running on the track, running on the beach.

“I’d go running early in the morning with my trainer and then I’d come home, do 1,000 crunches. And then I’d put in a tape of one of my commercials or something and I’d feel guilty. I’d feel like I didn’t deserve it. So I’d go out there and work a couple few more hours, earning it. She was telling me to relax sometimes, don’t take it so seriously. But it’s hard ‘cause you know what it takes to be a great player so you just want to go out and work constantly.

“But I’ve learned to relax sometimes too. Sometimes I think I work a little too hard, running constantly. . . . I don’t want to take a day off. If I take a day off, I feel like I’m cheating myself so it’s kind of a mental thing. I just like to keep going, once I start something, full force into it.”

A month after he went into the starting lineup, Miner came out.

In 13 starts, he had averaged 11 points and had given up more, while the Heat went 4-9.

Unable to find anywhere else to play the 6-9 Owens--they had tried him at the point and both forward positions--Loughery made him a shooting guard. And Miner became a reserve.

In his last start, Miner had two points in 19 minutes in a loss to the Indiana Pacers.

“Some games I play real well and some I don’t,” he said. “I’ve gotten into foul trouble in a few games while trying to get adjusted to the new rules.

“There are a lot of games I’ve been playing well when I’ve been taken out, which is tough to deal with. But as a team, I don’t think we’re playing as well as we can play. I guess that’s why they decided to change things.”

*

At USC, he was the man, all right.

Miner was the sun and the rest of the players were the planets. The basic play was for Miner to take the ball and make something happen. He moved, his teammates reacted. On defense, they covered for him.

“That hurt me a little bit,” says Miner, who averaged 23.5 points in three seasons as a Trojan. “I was asked to do so much offensively that some other things may have been overlooked, in terms of rounding out my total game, but I don’t have any regrets about it. I mean, I’m here, I’m in the NBA, I’m happy. It’s just a matter of trying to grow. A lot of things I missed, I just have to take my time and gradually pick ‘em up.”

It looked pretty funny, a rookie waiting for his veteran teammates to clear out of his way so he could go one on one. Even if Miner put on some amazing shows--his specialty was a breakout against the Lakers or the Clippers when family and friends could see--the Heat had other priorities.

His rookie season (a 10.3 scoring average in 73 games) was hard, but he expected it to be that way. His second season (10.5 in 63) was a disappointment.

His third season was a surprise. They handed him the job. He couldn’t keep it.

“It’s been very frustrating at times,” says Miner, who is averaging 10.1 points. “I mean it’s hard, to be perfectly honest.

“It’s very hard ‘cause I know what I can do. Everybody else knows what I can do.”

It’s an open question whether he will get another chance to do it in Miami, where the owners are selling, the coach is on a short leash and the team is in the cellar.

Miner, ever the good soldier, says he won’t ask to be traded, will continue to play hard, try to do what’s asked of him.

That’s where we leave him, trying to catch up to their program and his dream.