Heat’s playoff seeding still up in air as season ends
The Miami Heat enters the final day of the regular season with a lot to play for and a lot to pray for.
With Friday night’s 125-103 blowout win over the Toronto Raptors at Kaseya Center, the Heat’s hopes of avoiding the NBA’s play-in tournament remain alive. But the Heat is going to need to earn another win over the Raptors in Sunday’s regular-season finale in Miami (1 p.m., Bally Sports Sun) and some help from other teams to crack the top six in the Eastern Conference and steer clear of the play-in tourney.
The Heat currently sits in eighth place in the East at 45-36, one game behind the fourth-place Orlando Magic, fifth-place Indiana Pacers and sixthplace Philadelphia 76ers. The Magic, Pacers and 76ers all hold a 46-35 record.
The Heat is guaranteed to finish the regular season no worse than No. 8 in the East, but can also climb as high as No. 5 in the conference if multiple results break Miami’s way on Sunday. But Heat coach Erik Spoelstra and his players insists they stopped keeping track of the race after hitting a lateseason rough patch.
“I’m focused on my team,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat dropping three of its last five games before routing the struggling Raptors on Friday. “All I’m focused on is we get to a place where we’re connected and playing for each other and playing a spirited game where it’s to our identity. That’s all I care about right now. Because when we get to that, we feel like we can beat anybody anywhere anytime.”
The Heat may need to beat a team in the play-in tournament to make the playoffs for the second straight season. The play-in tourney features the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference.
“We’re not talking a lot about it,” Heat forward Nikola Jovic said of the