Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Down to the wire
Heat need victory, a loss by either Bulls or Pacers
Heat’s quest for playoffs will be decided tonight.
MIAMI — What has to happen for the Miami Heat to make the NBA playoffs is relatively simple:
Win tonight at American-Airlines Arena against the Washington Wizards and then have either (or both) the Chicago Bulls lose at home to the Brooklyn Nets or the Indiana Pacers lose at home to the Atlanta Hawks.
What is not nearly as tidy are the odds of that happening in the Heat’s favor.
According to ESPN’s Five Thirty Eight website, the Heat have a 24 percent chance of advancing to the postseason.
The website has the Heat winning tonight, but also forecasts the Bulls and Pacers to win, leaving the Heat finishing at 41-41 and losing out on the season-series tiebreaker (2-1) to Chicago.
According to ESPN’s Basketball Power Index, the Heat have a 27.6 percent chance of making the playoffs.
Those calculations also forecast victories by the Heat, Bulls and Pacers, creating that losing-proposition tie at 41-41 between the Heat and Bulls.
Basketball Reference’s “Probability Report” has the Heat projected to also finish No. 9 and out of the playoffs in the East, with a 40.6-41-4 record based on their 7,500 simulations of the season’s remaining games.
That modeling gives the Heat a 42.6 percent chance of making the playoffs.
And PlayoffStatus.com has the Heat with a 26 percent chance to making the playoffs,
compared to 92 percent for the Bulls and 86 percent for the Pacers.
The Heat, Pacers and Bulls are the only teams still vying for playoff berths in the East, with two spots available.
“Look, this is like our Game 7,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after Tuesday’s practice. “I know it doesn’t control everything. But it’s great to go through these experiences and to have meaning and value in the very last game.
“More than a third of the league is not playing for something right now. So either they’re out of the playoffs, or they’ve already been positioned and know where they are. There’s only a select few that is still playing for something. I think that’s what everybody always dreams, what this league and competition would be about, when you’re a kid, that every game would have significance.”
To Spoelstra, the sole focus on Wednesday will be the Wizards, who are locked into the No. 4 playoff seed in the Eastern Conference and expected to sit several starters, as the Cleveland Cavaliers did in Monday 124-121 overtime loss to the Heat.
“The Miami Heat are must-see basketball right now,” he said. “All of these games should have been on TV. It’s must-see TV. It’s thrilling. It’s competitive. Guys are laying it all out there on the court, competitively. There’s a great brotherhood that’s formed.
“This is what you want out of team sports. It’s why people play team sports. It’s not individual. The sum is greater than the parts, and that’s what you’re seeing with this group.”
Based on Spoelstra’s approach on Monday night, when the Pacers and Bulls were tightening the screws on the Heat with victories, don’t expect the Heat coaching staff to be scoreboard watching tonight, when all of the key Eastern Conference games will start at 8 p.m.
“For me, it’s distraction,” Spoelstra said Tuesday. “It definitely would have been distracting [Monday] night. Of course, I want to be in the moment with our guys.”
For now, the Heat vow to control what they can control.
“If you don’t make the playoffs, we would be sad, of course,” guard Goran Dragic said, after what could stand as the Heat’s final practice of the regular season. “Everything that we’ve worked for is to make the playoffs. First, we need to take care of business, try to win at home, and hopefully with God’s luck, Chicago, Indiana, they lose.”
Consolation with a victory without outside help would be making it all the way back to .500, something no team has done from the depth where the Heat once stood.
“That’s all we can do,” guard Tyler Johnson. “You can only control what you can control. We understand what we were able to do this second half of the season when people were kicking dirt on us. So that’s the only way you can go out -- we finish the season with a win.”
That, alone, forward James Johnson said, makes tonight meaningful.
“We know our work is not done,” he said.
And, he, too, won’t be scoreboard watching, other than the score between the Heat and Wizards.
“When you’re out there, you don’t think too much about what’s at stake,” he said. “As long as we take care of our business, however the chips fall after that, we’ll let them fall. We’re going to control what we can control.”