Lakers Are Defending Champs, But Heat Deserve Respect Too

Ever since the signing of the "Big Three" in Miami, there has been an overwhelming amount of articles on the Heat, for them or against them.  There are a fair amount of haters, as well as those who view the Heat as favorites to win it all.

Something I have come to notice is that a lot of those haters tend to reside on the West Coast.  The city of Los Angeles, to be exact.

Before I take my dive into the meat of this piece, let me start off with the fact that of course the Los Angeles Lakers deserve the proper respect for winning the 2010 NBA title.  Don't forget they repeated and will be going for a "three-peat" this year.  Kobe and his boys deserve all the respect and more at this point and time as any defending champion in any sport does.

But, and that's a huge but, there's a difference between the Lakers and their fans demanding respect and being straight up arrogant and quite frankly ignorant.  

Many Lakers fans are upset at the amount of attention the Heat are getting this summer. Can you blame the Heat?  Can you blame the media?  Can you blame Heat fans?

This is, without question, the biggest free agent summer in perhaps all of sports, and now you have a superstar pairing like none before.  And you expect people to not talk about it and instead only talk about the Lakers and how great they are?  No, so get over it, Lakers fans.  And you know you would be talking just as much and be just as proud if you were in the Heat's situation right now.  Don't even bother attempting to deny that.

Secondly, yes, many NBA fans and analysts have gone a little bit overboard with the predictions for this coming season.  Some refuse to give the Heat the credit they deserve for acquiring James, Bosh, and Wade and filling out the rest of their roster.  Some continue to give the unproven (yes, I am a Heat fan and yes, fellow Heat fans, we are unpr...