Some Hints of a Bigger Drama Awaiting Heat MIAMI - Besides going the distance and sparing the N.B.A. a yawning gap at the height of its 2013 postseason, the Eastern Conference finals may best be remembered for fast forwarding the overriding narrative for the 2013-14 regular season. With a nod to the itinerant tale of LeBron James's talent, we may prepare ourselves for what's certain to become an obsession that will take us to Decision II a year from now. Granted, it's a long way off. Much can happen, including a second straight title for the Heat after it blew away the too-turnover-prone Indiana Pacers, 99-76, on Monday night in Game 7 behind James's 32 points. But suffice to say that the presumed countdown to another Miami championship has at times sounded like a rush of sands moving south through an hourglass on the multiple title aspirations of James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. It wasn't so much that the Heat were taken the distance by the young-and-coming Pacers, while Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs awaited the winner. Many a championship team has struggled with and arm-wrestled worthy opponents to reach the finish. The Heat were pushed to the brink by Boston in this round last year. But Miami's subplots seemed more serious than the standard playoff swings. The valiant challenge from the Pacers should not have obscured the looming threat from within a Miami foundation showing small but unmistakable signs of fracture. It's hard to argue with three consecutive trips to the finals, but for a good chunk of this series, the Heat, at best, looked like a team clinging to its mojo, James at the helm of an aging, fraying cast. From the beginning, the Heat were an arranged marriage of convenience, a business partnership of longstanding expectation. Strip that away, and what will be left? The finals outcome notwithstanding, the Heat and especially James will have to renew their vows after next season, with the principals capable of opting out after four years together. How attractive Wade, possibly in a state of irreversible decline, and the enigmatic Bosh will be to James next summer is difficult to say, but a risk-free speculation. Wade could, of course, be one surgical procedure from having his powers restored as the co-star James embraced after failing to win a championship as a lone star in Cleveland. At 31, Wade is hardly too old to recover. But the abandon with which he has played - a 6-foot-4 contortionist with a knack for being smacked to the floor by bigger men - may have altered his career body clock. His struggles in the playoffs last season were well documented, and this year, buckling under the strain of a damaged right knee, they have been worse. Wade's complaints after Game 6 that the Heat - but mainly James - needed to move the ball more to help create better shots for others may have been said more in frustration of what he physically could not do than what James could do for him. But Wade's comments may also have been a rebuttal to James's remark after Game 5, when he said he "went back" to his "Cleveland days" to explain his monopolizing of the ball in the third quarter. Was the reference an innocent commentary on a necessary decision he made to seize control of a swing game, or a peek inside the mind of a man already disappointed by being back in that position so soon? The team president Pat Riley recruited James during the summer of 2010 by dropping a bag of championship rings accumulated over decades onto a table. Wade also pitched James hard and the two by all appearances forged a close friendship, promising many more rings to come and happiness ever after. Before Game 7, Bosh promised that he and Wade would "do what we're supposed to do." Above all, except for the indefatigable James, Wade flashed his old familiar hops on the way to the hoop and to an occasion-rising 21-point night. But the Heat won with a swarming defensive assault that especially overwhelmed Paul George and had the Pacers turning over everything but their first born. "I just felt better," Wade said, referring to the troublesome knee. It helped that James, in a morning conversation, told him that he would guard George to allow Wade to focus on his offense. With Mami rolling late in the game the two shared a tight hug. All good in the here and now. But at some point next year, James will have another gut-wrenching decision to make, much as it was in 2010. Stay home, where the heart is, or find a younger, more athletic version of Wade in another celebrating city. When he left Cleveland, James was comically treated like an enemy of the state for the crime of wanting to play on a better team. By now, he should know that even one title is enough to win back the capricious mainstream. Back on the league's biggest stage, Miami and San Antonio will make for a compelling series of ultimate contrasts in team-building cultures. There will be, or should be, a great deal of sentiment for Duncan, 37, and the small-market organization that has endured with him as its centerpiece in three decades. Matched against a more freewheeling opponent that does not play brawny basketball, Indiana style, the smallish Heat could well resemble the team that ran off 27 straight regular-season victories. So perhaps James and Wade will look back on the Pacers series and squabbles as nothing more than scenes from a marriage, the low end of thick and thin. But once these finals are over, get ready for a 2013-14 N.B.A. story line that will be dominating, fascinating and ultimately enervating. Even now, with Miami again four victories from a title, this microwaved championship city has to be asking itself: when Decision II is made, will it be lights, camera and a South Beach retraction for the best player on the planet?