Heat needs strong finish to avoid the play-in
The Miami Heat will need do something it hasn’t done for most of the season to avoid the play-in tournament: String together a bunch of wins over a monthlong stretch.
After losing to the Cleveland Cavaliers 104100 on Wednesday night at Miami-Dade Arena, the Heat fell further into playin tournament territory with just one month left in the regular season.
The Heat is in seventh place in the Eastern Conference at 35-32, entering Thursday three games behind the sixth-place Brooklyn Nets and four games behind the fifthplace New York Knicks with only 15 regular-season games left. To escape having to qualify for the play-in tournament, the Heat needs to finish as a top-six playoff seed in the
East.
“I don’t look at the standings, I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t,” Heat star Jimmy Butler said ahead of Friday’s rematch with the Cavaliers (8 p.m., Bally Sports Sun and NBA TV) to close a six-game homestand. “I don’t look at none of that stuff. So I’m guessing we’re in the play-in, right? Well, we better be winning some games to get out of that. If we don’t, then we better win whenever the play-in starts.”
The tiebreaker with the Knicks is still up for grabs, but the Nets have already clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker against the Heat by winning the first two meetings in the teams’ three-game season series. That means Miami is essentially four games behind Brooklyn since the Heat doesn’t hold the tiebreaker edge.
With the Nets entering Thursday with a 37-28 record, Miami would need to go 11-4 through its final 15 games to pass Brooklyn if the Nets hypothetically close with an 8-9 record over its final 17 regularseason games.
Through statistical analysis, FiveThirtyEight projects the Heat to finish the regular season as a play-in tournament team as the seventh seed in the East with a 43-39 record.
The play-in tournament takes place during the window between the regular season and the start of the playoffs, beginning April 11 and ending April 14. The seventh- through 10th-place teams compete for the final two playoffs seeds in each conference.
How is the play-in tournament structured?
The No. 7 seed in each conference hosts the No. 8 seed in one of the playin games. The winner of this matchup in each conference earns the seventh playoff seed.
The No. 9 seed in each conference hosts the No. 10 seed in another play-in game. The loser of this matchup in each conference is eliminated from playoff contention, and the winner of this matchup in each conference will go on the road to take on the loser of the No. 7 vs. No. 8 play-in game for the right to be the eighth playoff seed.
So the teams with the seventh-highest and eighth-highest winning percentages in each conference will each have two opportunities to win one game to earn a playoff spot. The teams with the ninth-highest and 10thhighest winning percentages in each conference each have to win two consecutive games to earn a playoff spot.
As it stands Thursday, the No. 7 Heat would host the No. 8 Atlanta Hawks in a play-in game with the East’s seventh playoff seed on the line. The No. 9 Toronto Raptors would host the No. 10 Washington Wizards in the other East play-in game.
According to a source, the No. 7 vs. No. 8 play-in game in each conference would be Tuesday, April 11, and the East’s final play-in game between the loser of the No. 7 vs. No. 8 game and the winner of the No. 9 vs. No. 10 game in each conference would be Friday, April 14.
INJURY REPORT
Left knee soreness will force Heat point guard Kyle Lowry to miss his 15th consecutive game on Friday. He has not played in a game since Feb. 2.
While the Heat has not offered a definitive timetable for Lowry’s return, the belief is he’s close to coming back. The expectation is Lowry will return before the end of the season and possibly within the coming days.