Despite skid, Heat in contention
Miami in middle of playoff pursuit in East madness
MIAMI — Erik Spoelstra never expected this to go any differently.
This is his 10th season coaching in the NBA. He knows this is the time of year bumps can appear in the road, so he’s not ready to panic now that his Miami Heat have somewhat skidded off path.
They just need to regain control of the wheel.
“At this point, whatever it takes,” Spoelstra said. “Going down the stretch, this whole playoff race is going to be wild. It’s going to be crazy, a lot of fun.”
How things have changed for the Heat of late. A few weeks ago, they were in position to grab the No. 3 spot in the Eastern Conference standings. They were three points from surpassing LeBron James and the threetime defending Eastern champion Cavaliers.
Instead, they are on a three-game losing streak and fell to as low as the seventh seed.
“We didn’t expect it to be easy,” forward James Johnson said. “We didn’t expect none of this to be easy. We just got to keep regrouping, get everything back in order and above all else get connected again as a unit, as a team.”
The Heat are in the middle of the madness that is the playoff race in the East. With the exception of the Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors and sometimes the fading Cavaliers, the rest of the teams appear headed toward a three-month battle of jockeying among the final five playoff spots. As of Sunday, the No. 4 and No. 9 teams were separated by only 41⁄2 games.
“Look at the Eastern Conference right now,” Spoelstra said. “You have a couple teams that have separated themselves and everybody else is just bunched up. That’s what you want as competitors. You want to be playing for something. It should be a wild couple of months.”
The Heat could gain some momentum during a three-game homestand that begins tonight against the Magic at AmericanAirlines Arena. Nine of their 15 games in January were on the road, so any time at home is appreciated.
“We just need to take a deep breath and refocus,” center Kelly Olynyk said. “We've just got to go into the next game and get ourselves one."
Still, that won’t be easy with two of the games against teams — the Houston Rockets and Milwaukee Bucks — in the playoff picture.
“It's tough,” guard Goran Dragic said. “When you win, you always watch. When you lose, you always watch. Like I said, we know how we can get better. We know the formula. We just need to get into the gym and try to be consistent.”
The immediate issue for the Heat is settling on a starting lineup.They used their 16th combination in Saturday’s loss at Detroit because center Hassan Whiteside was sidelined due to an illness.
In his absence, Spoelstra inserted Olynyk and Whiteside and moved Johnson to the bench. The new lineup took some adjustment but the Heat figured it out and nearly left with a win.
“A little bit,” Dragic said. “We competed. At the end of the third quarter we got a lead. We just need to do a better job in the 4th quarter.”
Allowing the Pistons to score 35 points in the fourth quarter ruined any chance of finishing the four-game road trip on a positive. They have now lost seven of 11 since their seven-game winning streak in early January.
“Bittersweet,” Johnson said of finishing the road trip 1-3. “We really wanted to go back home at least half of these games won on the road and we didn’t accomplish that. We just got to step it up, man.”