Final 10 games critical with play-in tourney looming
The math has become simple for the Miami Heat even as the playoff permutations grow more complex.
Ten games remain in their pandemic-compacted 72-game schedule, 10 games that will determine whether Erik Spoelstra’s team can avoid the play-in tournament or whether it all could be over before the May 22 start of the NBA playoffs.
Six will be on the road, four at home.
Seven will be against teams with winning records, three against teams with losing records.
Two will come off two days of rest, six off one day of rest and two on the second night of back-toback sets.
If the NBA’s goal of adding the play-in tournament was to add a sense of desperation to the closing weeks of the season, then mission accomplished, at least in South Florida.
“Obviously, we know every game counts right now, especially with this play-in situation,” forward Trevor Ariza said, with the Heat turning their attention to Wednesday night’s game against the San Antonio Spurs at AmericanAirlines Arena.
The stakes are severe. Finish with a top-6 seed and there will be at least five days off after the May 16 conclusion of the regular season and then a move directly into the best-of-seven
opening playoff round.
But finish anywhere from No. 7 (where the Heat currently stand) to No. 10 and the days prior to the May 22 start to the playoffs will determine if there is to be more.
The play-in format is relatively straightforward: No. 7 hosts No. 8 in a single game, with the winner advancing directly to the playoffs as the No. 7 seed. Concurrently, No. 9 hosts No. 10 in a winner-take-all game to remain alive. Then the loser of the No. 7-No. 8 game hosts the winner of the No. 9-No. 10 game, with that game’s winner securing the No. 8 seed.
So of the four-team play-in field in each conference, two in and two out.
For a team that advanced to last season’s NBA Finals, the play-in reality looms large for the Heat.
“We have to focus on these last 10 and play ‘em like our playoff lives depended on ‘em, because they do,” Ariza said. “The seeding is important. So whatever we do, we have to do it knowing that we can be in the play-in situation or we can be seeded and set and ready to go.”
The next 10 games will determine whether the Heat can take a pre-playoff exhale, or whether this treadmill of competition that began last summer in the NBA’s quarantine bubble at Disney World will prove unrelenting.
“I feel like we got another level to get to that we haven’t tapped in,” center Bam Adebayo said after Monday’s troubling loss to the middling Chicago Bulls. “We need to get to that level fast, before the season goes south.”
Make or break has arrived. The Heat already have lost to every potential opponent in the play-in race: Charlotte, Indiana, Washington, Chicago and Toronto.
“We have to be better as a whole,” forward Jimmy Butler said. “So we’ve got 10 games to collectively be better.”
To Spoelstra, the big picture will sort itself out. For now, it’s on to the next.
“Look,” he said, “there’s going to be high emotion with the remaining games, and that’s not exclusive to the Miami Heat. That’s going to be all those teams in the Eastern Conference that are grouped up where we are.
“And on any given night the storylines are going to sway dramatically one way or another, based on a win or loss. We have to stay the course, handle our business and just focus on the Spurs on Wednesday.”
As for the play-in tournament, Adebayo said it was a shrewd move by the league, if not necessarily embraced now by those in the lower-tier of the playoff race.
“Everybody’s got mixed feelings about it,” he said. “So you got people that’s like, ‘Oh, we should do seven, eight [directly into the playoffs], stay like it is,’ and got some people like, ‘We like the play-in game because it keeps it more competitive.’ I’m either/or, I don’t really care.”
Except now the Heat have to care. Because a detour ahead of the playoffs potentially awaits.
“I feel like we should tap into the next level,” Adebayo said, “so we don’t have to do the play-in tournament or the play-in game.”