Heat embracing underdog role

Heat wins! But did they, really? No Butler a big problem

How hard would you fight to win if winning meant a hugely harder battle ahead — one everyone seemed sure you would lose decisively? Perhaps even embarrassingly. And that you’d have to undertake this biggest of challenges without your biggest star and top scorer?

That is how much fight the Miami Heat brought Friday night in the must-win play-in that could have been their last game of this NBA season but instead was their entry into the playoffs ... and a trip to Boston.

I wasn’t sure if the first postgame media question of coach Erik Spoelstra should have been prefaced with “Congratulations,” or “I’m sorry for your win...”

Heat fans were chanting, “We want Boston!” in the fourth quarter. Be careful what you wish for? In the mighty Celtics, the Heat now will face the tallest mountain in the very first round, and must make that steepest climb without the reassuring lead of their sage and sherpa, Jimmy Butler, erased indefinitely (reportedly “several weeks”) by his right knee sprain.

No Playoff Jimmy, no playoff hope. Right?

That is what the basketball world is thinking today. What the expert talking heads and the bettors are thinking. Maybe what even most Heat fans privately believe when not mustering outward confidence.

Everybody except the men in the mirrors on Miami’s roster, evidently?