South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
A decade later, Chalmers again awaiting his call
There is a fine line between nostalgia and reality. That is where Mario Chalmers finds himself in this six-years-after-the-fact comeback with the Miami Heat.
Signed Friday to an emergency 10-day contract amid a growing list of Heat players in NBA health-and-safety protocols. Chalmers made it Friday night as far as again being in his No. 15 Heat jersey. But he did not make it to the court.
Now, with the NBA reducing the mandatory quarantine period for positive coronavirus tests to as few as five days, the midnight hour could come by Wednesday, with as many as five Heat sidelined players positioned to clear protocols before that night’s road game against the Portland Trail Blazers.
That could leave only Sunday’s game against the Sacramento Kings and Monday night’s against the Golden State Warriors for Chalmers 2.0 to officially become a thing.
“We’re kind of going and figuring this out minute by minute,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, after holding Chalmers out of Friday night’s 120-110 victory over the Houston Rockets at the Toyota Center. “I’m just open minded to all of this.”
Left with only six newcomers, all signed this past week out of the G League, Spoelstra on Friday instead opted to go with Kyle Guy, Haywood Highsmith, Nik Stauskas and former Heat power forward Chris Silva as his emergency reserves, playing neither Chalmers nor Aric Holman, his only other available reserves.
“We’re really just talking about a series of events that just happened in the last 48 hours,” Spoelstra said after Friday night’s game. “I would have liked to have gotten him in tonight. I know he really was itching to get in there. He’s a competitor. Of course he would want to get out there. It didn’t happen tonight, but it very well could at some point on this road trip.”
Just being back in a Heat uniform for the first time since he was dealt to the Memphis
Grizzlies in November 2018 for Beno Udrih made Chalmers’ night.
“I’m not going to lie. My immediate reaction is I didn’t believe it,” Chalmers said of the call from the Heat, who still have P.J. Tucker, Max Strus, Gabe Vincent, Duncan Robinson, Marcus Garrett and Udonis Haslem in protocols. “I thought my agent was playing with me.
“But I’m just grateful for the opportunity. Whatever happens, happens. I definitely want to thank Pat [Riley, the Heat’s president] and the rest of the Heat organization for just giving me this opportunity to come back.”
The irony is that fans at the Toyota Center were clamoring Friday with chants of “We want ‘Rio!” after Chalmers, himself, had spent time at Heat home games in recent years rooting for his former team, out of the NBA since 2018.
“I’ve definitely been following them for years,” said Chalmers, who initially joined the Heat in the second round of the 2008 NBA draft out of Kansas. “I even came to a couple of games. I’ve always been a Heat fan. I’m always going to be a Heat fan.
“So it’s just good to see them carrying the same Heat culture, the same Heat tradition that was cast down to us. The culture is carrying on and it remains extreme.”
And, so, once again, No. 15, former Heat championship teammate of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh, waits for the call from Spoelstra, just as he did a decade earlier.
“The funny thing about that, me and Spo actually talked back and forth ever since I left the Heat,” Chalmers, 35, said. “Spo is my first NBA coach. We came in together, we grinded together that first year, and really my first seven years. So that was my first coach, my first person I really became close with as a coach.
“The conversations never stopped between me and Spo. I was still checking in, asking him how he’s doing. He would do that same. Just being back, and seeing him face to face, it was good, just felt like old times again, it just felt good to be welcomed.”