Hyperminutes: The only way to run

It's that time of year again, basketball fans: the season opener. The opening tip. And there is plenty to sort through before all of that begins.

The Heat have obviously made a ton of noise this offseason - like a jet-engine alarm clock sounding off. But stop hitting that snooze alarm, time to wake up.

Unfortunately, most of the noise has been negative. Actually, harsly negative. The nay-sayers continue to expound upon the notion of team chemistry, and how personalities like Jason Williams, Antoine Walker, Shaquille O'neal, Gary Payton and Dwyane Wade will all clash like a Nicole Richie outfit. One of the paramount issues in this on-going chemistry debate is whether or not the new Heatians can subscribe to 'lesser roles' or becoming 'complementary players'. This is the charge of the head coach, Stan Van Gundy - and it is possible.

As for the latter concept, every player is a complementary player. Not to wax philosophical, but it is a team sport and like any organism, it can only function as well as it is composed. As for the idea of a 'lesser roles', SVG is going to have sell the whole team on this concept because EVERYONE will, in essence, take on a lesser role.

First of all, this is how teams become champions. You increase the talent in the talent pool and become less dependent on one player carrying the team. This is what Minnesota has yet to figure out with Kevin Garnett - who seems to get a hernia carrying that team year in and year out.

Yet, this also leaves the door wide open and illustrates for us the idea of 'hyperproductivity' or something I would like to coin which is 'hyperminutes'.

The idea is simple: it is all about efficiency in a given period of time. Basketball stats has, for example, figures that are calculated out per minute and then gives what a player's production would look like over a 48 minute span. This is nothing revolutionary at this point; every novice basketball fan has heard of a player's production over 48 minutes.

If we follow this illustration, we can see how the Heat have to approach their season and meet the challenge of keeping the players happy. Stan Van Gundy and the coaching staff all have to articulate to the players that their numbers may fall off, but the challenge for each player must be in not just keeping pace with their prior career numbers, but improving upon them and becoming more efficient. Believe it or not, this will require each player to be better, and at the same time being on a team like the Heat which is deep with talent, they will have more opportunities to become more efficient players.

Better efficiency increases the likelihood of winning. With increased wins comes increased chances for a player to win a game, too. After all, nothing builds 'chemistry' more than winning. Or does good chemistry yield wins? Well, that debate may never be settled. But one thing is for sure, for the Miami Heat to be successful this season, there is one main challenge they are faced with: to convince their players to take on less minutes and become more efficient players and show how that this will benefit them as a team.

Quite simply, the Heat are faced with making a team out of what has been already deemed a collection of indivduals. Selling the players on a notion like hyperproduction or hyperminutes is the key to making a run for the championship.