Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Scouting assessment has Heat between fourth, seventh in East
A playoff spot seems likely, but a title does not
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When the responsibility is assessing individual talent, preparing evaluation reports on players for management, the big picture often can stand as insignificant for NBA propersonnel scouts.
Such was the case for a long-time Eastern Conference scout on Wednesday night.
And then something in the standings caught his eye.
“I am shocked,’’ he said. “I don’t check the standings every day. I am shocked at this, to be honest with you.”
He was talking about the Miami Heat, who that night had defeated the Milwaukee Bucks to move within a half-game of the Cleveland Cavaliers for third place in the East.
“I mean, they’re a good team,” he said, offering his comments anonymously because of his affiliation with another team. “This is cliché: They play the right way. They guard. This is true of the cliché: They play hard.
“I can’t believe how good the Heat is.”
Which got him thinking about his own team and this East playoff race reshuffled by the Heat’s resurgence.
That led to a conversation about different tiers in the East and where the Heat might fit in, now that they have renewed confidence.
First came the obvious, that even with the Heat nipping at heels, he said he still views the Cleveland Cavaliers, Toronto Raptors and Boston Celtics, in any order, as a top tier unto themselves.
“The Cavaliers are struggling,” he acknowledged. “They’ve obviously dropped some. I mean everybody was bemoaning how bad they were early, then they went on a massive streak.
“I would be surprised if any of those teams dropped below three.”
Then came a discussion about the next playoff tier in the East.
“The second grouping would be the Wizards, the Heat, uh, Milwaukee, but they’ve underachieved, and Detroit,” he said. “I wouldn’t go any further.”
Asked if he believed all four of those teams to be playoff locks, he hedged.
“Certainly not definitively,” he said. “I would say the risky team would be the Pistons, because they’re trying to make moves and [Reggie] Jackson’s out. They play great one night, and then ... they’re erratic. There’s no rhyme or reason to them.”
The aforementioned teams — Cavaliers, Celtics, Raptors, Heat, Wizards, Bucks and Pistons — therefore would account for seven of the eight available playoff spots. So, from there? “Charlotte is the X-team now,” he said. “They’re playing much better. I definitely wouldn’t count them out. They’re still a longshot, considering they do have to make up a lot of ground.”
Of the others potentially scrambling for the conference’s final playoff seed, he mentioned the Indiana Pacers and Philadelphia 76ers.
Of the Pacers, he said, “They could even end up as a seventh seed. That’s not out of the question.”
But he did have questions about the 76ers, namely with Joel Embiid’s missed games and, now, J.J. Redick’s leg injury.
“Embiid’s on-again, off-again status in terms of actually playing is always a concern,” he said, “and Redick is out.”
That drove the conversation back to the Heat, and assessments of the recent uptick.
“Dion Waiters out of the lineup helps, evidently, right? That’s a chemical impact,” he said. “And then [Bam] Adebayo has plugged right in, with his improvement.”
Still, he said there remain enough variables in the conference to have the Heat in a swing position.
“The highest would be fourth,” he said of potential playoff seeding. “The lowest, I don’t know, sixth or maybe seventh, being very pessimistic.” As for how it ends? “In the second round,” he said, “they can win some games. It is hard to see them winning a whole [second-round] series. But the standings make me want to watch them more now.”