Will Heat melt?

Team in a must-win game tonight.

Doubt? Sure, there’s doubt.

“Human nature, any guy that’s down 3-0, 3-1, human nature is for you to doubt...” Heat guard Dwyane Wade said. “Anybody that says they don’t doubt, they’re lying. It’s going to be a moment of doubt, a second of doubt. But you get over it. You understand that you still have life, you still have another opportunity.”

This is what’s to love about sports. Those given no chance must create a chance in the face of every contrary emotion, from doubt to straight-out disbelief, because they know what’s waiting tonight in Philadelphia.

Ben Simmons. Joel Embiid. A 3-to-1 deficit. The corrosive knowledge that only two teams have ever climbed out of this first-round hole. And, worst of all, passionate fans filling the arena a half-hour before tip-off chanting, “Trust the Process.”

Oh, wait. That last one is my concern. It’s my doubt. It’s my fear that we’re at the edge of civilization, the end of the Republic, the disintegration of traditional Western morality as we know it in the sports world.

“‘The Process’ was the way to go about it,’’ Embiid,

Philadelphia’s star center, said of the 76ers’ blueprint earlier this series. “I think other teams can look at us and what we’ve got going right now and see that.”

This is where the curtain went up on this first-round series, and since it’s just the first round it can’t be a morality play for the greater good of sports. But it serves as a warning shot across the bow of integrity considering the franchises’ philosophies.

The Heat huffed and puffed in recent years through LeBron James’ exit, Chris Bosh’s illness and some calamitous dominoes that fell from those decisions, like the trade of Goran Dragic and the rolling of dice on Hassan Whiteside.

They tried. That’s the point here. They didn’t throw away seasons, plural, as in four, which is what the 76ers did. Combined with a string of lottery luck, Philadelphia assembled four draft picks in the top three.

That’s “The Process.” Get rewarded for lots of losing. Simmons and Markelle Fultz were No. 1 picks. Embiid and Jahlil Okafor were No. 3 picks. Half wheat, half chaff (OK, the verdict’s out on Fultz).

In a diluted East, Simmons and Embiid might cut a path to the Finals, assuming the Heat don’t rally to win this series. And then what? In a copy-cat sports world, how many teams will embrace years of losing? How many games will be worthless viewing?

NBA commissioner Adam Silver fears his league becomes fully infected. Baseball already is (the Marlins, like several teams, are copying Houston’s losing way to the top). Silver fined Dallas owner Mark Cuban $600,000 in February for admitting to tanking.

What about Atlanta waiving Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova in February for fear they’d help win games? They signed with Philadelphia, adding veteran depth to a team needing some (yes, the Heat oddly traded for former Atlanta forward Luke Babbitt).

Silver is a smart man. He must see some way to stop this virus. If not, here’s a simple, anti-tank serum conceived over four games of watching this Heat series:

Don’t let a team drafting in the top five in any year get a top-five pick for a consecutive season.

To take tanking down another notch: If a team has one of the league’s five worst records for three straight years – and, thus, a top-five and top-10 pick – it can’t have a top-10 draft pick after that third year.

That would end the incentive of tanking and cure our delicate sports ecosystem of a combination of the Black Plague, mad-cow disease and lion fish in the open seas.

The Heat appear beyond helping in this series. That’s part of the charm of what they’ll try in Game 5 tonight. And they’ll try. That’s the culture of this franchise.

“We’ve done it once, and so I believe can do it again,’’ Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of winning in Philadelphia.

The other storyline tonight is Philadelphia creeping like poison ivy into the spotlight. “Trust the Process?” It’s not armageddon in Game 5 of a first-round series. But you can hear the chanting from here.

Dave Hyde