Can the Heat pull an upset vs. 76ers?

MIAMI — So it’s Door No. 3 for the Miami Heat. It’s third-seeded Philadelphia. It’s an opening round in the microwaved city of champions. It’s a matchup of a 76ers franchise built on tanking against the Heat, the biggest anti-tanking franchise of them all. It’s Hassan Whiteside on this Twitter account against Joel Embiid on that account, too, because there’s room for entertainment and these two have a past history of 140 characters or less. Whiteside might win that tweet-off. It’s nuts, too, it came to this. The Heat beat Toronto in overtime in Wednesday’s regular-season finale to earn the matchup with talented but untested Philadelphia. If they had lost, if they had tanked the night, they’d be against depleted Boston instead.

That’s the perfect lead-in to this series, considering Philadelphia’s business model has been to lose for years to draft winning talent.

If you consider it sinful to reward serial losing, the Heat is your team this series. Whether they’re the team anyone’s picking to win is another matter.

Can they do what no Heat team has ever done? Can they actually pull off a playoff upset?

Because the Heat isn’t being asked to win a series no one thought they can win against Toronto or Cleveland. They’re not facing a series everyone thought they could win against Boston, either.

This is more nuanced. Philadelphia will be favored on full merit. It’s more talented.

It’s had the better season. It enters the playoffs off 16 straight games, for heaven’s sake, which at least should get them a regular-season door prize.

The Heat have two things in their favor:

1) Embiid has a facial fracture and said on Wednesday he won’t start the series.

2) That 16-game win streak for a young team.

Yes, that second point is odd to say. But if ever a team was set up to be ambushed in an opening playoff game at home, when everyone’s singing praises, it’s the 76ers in this one.

That should be the Heat’s mentality, anyway. The best player in the series, Philadelphia, Ben Simmons, is a rookie. Philadelphia has a cast of little playoff experience.

You could make the case about the Heat, too, considering the likes of Whiteside, Josh Richardson, Tyler Johnson and Justise Winslow have thin-to-no postseason experience. But work with me here. Don’t ruin the narrative.

If the Heat can steal that opener, if they can make the experience of Goran Dragic, James Johnson and Dwyane Wade matter, then they can flip the switch on the series. Or try.

Because this would be a serious NBA upset. And, as mentioned, the Heat don’t have any of those. No?

This isn’t a Heat issue as much as an NBA issue. It’s a status-quo league. The only surprise is how excited everyone becomes this time of year given you know the last page of the book (Golden State over Cleveland again).

The Heat, depending on how you view it. Do you count a second-seeded Heat beating top-seed Oklahoma City for the title in 2012? Probably not. The Big Three couldn’t, by definition, upset anyone.

So the Heat have never pulled a playoff upset in their history. Certainly not like what they’re being asked to in this series. You know how Spoelstra will frame such a scenario? An opportunity.

For the rest of us, this would be a surprising Heat playoff win in a season that’s yielded few surprises beyond Josh Richardson’s hair selections and Dwyane Wade’s return home.

They’ve met expectations headon — 44 wins? sixth seed? — more than exceeded any. That was the fear with returning most of the same cast as last season. A team with average talent begets an average team, no matter how much you hope otherwise.

They need an upset in a sports that isn’t football, where it’s one game. It’s not baseball, where it’s a couple of pitchers. It’s not hockey, where it’s so random bottom seeds often make runs to the Stanley Cup.

Philadelphia will be favored. The Heat will be hungry. It’s crazy Wednesday took us to this, but here we go.