Miami Heat supporting cast ready for new season

When Heat point guard Carlos Arroyo returned to his native Puerto Rico this summer, he kept hearing the same question:

``If you go on a break and have LeBron James and [Dwyane Wade], who are you going to give it to?''

Arroyo offered an amusing response:

``I'm going to shoot it myself. I don't want no trouble with those guys.''

``I'm going on 11 years now, and it's the first time I've laced it up in September, October and felt like I had a chance to win it all. That's exciting,'' swingman Mike Miller said outside the Heat's locker room at AmericanAirlines Arena, less than two weeks before the Sept. 28 start of training camp.

``A lot of people are granting us as the champions already, and we've got a long, long way to go. We haven't practiced a full practice together. We have a lot of stuff we have to get better at.

``If you look at the past champions, we're just as talented as those teams,'' Miller added. ``But there's a lot more than talent that goes into it. A lot of sacrifice has been made, but our biggest sacrifice is yet to come.''

New Heat center Zydrunas Ilgauskas put it this way: ``We'll get everybody's best shot every game. We'll use it as motivation . . . take it as a challenge. Everybody is eager to see how we're going to gel.''