Upcoming soft spot in schedule crucial for Heat in playoff race
The Miami Heat has struggled against the NBA’s top teams this season and those struggles have the Heat in play-in tournament territory for the second straight season.
That trend continued during the Heat’s winless two-game trip that included back-to-back losses to two winning teams — a 114108 loss to the Mavericks in Dallas on Thursday night and a 107100 loss to the Thunder in Oklahoma City on Friday night. It marks the first time the Heat has lost two games in a row since the final week of January.
“I mean, this is competition and we’re going to work together until we get this breakthrough,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “These are painful moments. We had an opportunity in both games.”
Those losses dropped the Heat to 14-20 this season in games against teams that entered Saturday with a winning record. The Heat is also just 1-6 against the four teams (Boston Celtics, Thunder, Denver Nuggets and New Orleans Pelicans) with both a top-10 offensive rating and top-10 defensive rating this season.
But the good news for the Heat is it has reached a soft spot in its late-season schedule as it works to avoid the play-in tournament, with three of its next four games coming against teams that hold the bottom two records in the NBA this season. It begins Sunday against the struggling Washington Wizards at Kaseya Center (6 p.m., Bally Sports Sun).
The Wizards enter with the NBA’s worst record at 10-53 and had lost 16 straight games before defeating the Charlotte Hornets on Friday.
The other two such games during this four-game stretch come against the Pistons on March 15 and March 17 during a