Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
For Spoelstra, top-6 seed means catching a break
The Miami Heat exited Tuesday night’s loss to the Memphis Grizzlies at No. 6 in the Eastern Conference. In today’s NBA, that’s still a safe space, one that can provide a postseason exhale.
It also is a position that comes with no wiggle room.
As part of the NBA’s reconfigured postseason, not only do the top six seeds in each conference avoid the play-in round, where one or two losses can end a season, but the top six seeds for the first time in years also will get nearly a week off prior the bestof-seven first-round of the playoffs.
Teams participating in the play-in round (seeds Nos. 6-10 in each conference) will contest those games between May 18 and May 21, in the wake of the May 16 close of the regular season. The initial games of the playoffs will start May 22, with other series starting May 23.
While recent seasons have left teams with as few as two days off between the regular-season finales and playoff openers, there was a time when Pat Riley, during his tenures with the New York Knicks and Heat, would take his teams away for pre-playoff retreats, with the type of scheduling that now again will be afforded to the top six playoff seeds in each conference.
It is why Heat coach Erik Spoelstra recognizes these final six weeks as so significant.
“I thought it was a misprint on my calendar when they gave it to me,” Spoelstra said. “It’d be almost like a throwback to the late ‘90s, when I remember we used to go to training camp up in Boca before the playoffs. We won’t be doing that. But, we’ll see. We still have time to plan that out.”
Because the play-in round determines only the Nos. 7-8 seeds in each conference, it means seeds Nos. 3-6 in each conference can use the intervening week in the reconfigured schedule to game plan for a specific opponent that will be known at the start of the weeklong break.
Comfort zone
While Tuesday night’s 124-112 loss to the Grizzlies at AmericanAirlines Arena was sobering, guard Duncan Robinson said there still was benefit in the additional time working with trading-deadline arrivals Trevor Ariza, Victor Oladipo and Nemanja Bjelica.
“We’re getting more and more comfortable, every game, every practice, every shootaround,” Robinson said. “In many cases, they’ve kind of been thrown into the fire. So any reps that they give is helping them.
“And they’re slowing seeing it slow down for them, and just allowing them to be themselves, which is really skilled and unselfish basketball players.”
As for the rest of the team, Robinson said of Tuesday’s loss, “just refocus, learn from it, use it as motivation.”
“We’ve got to band to together,” he said of turning to Thursday’s nationally televised visit by the shorthanded Los Angeles Lakers. “No one individual is going to shoulder it on their own, but it’s got to be a group, collective effort.”
Herro sore
The Heat added Tyler Herro to their injury report for Thursday night, listing him as probable, with left foot soreness. KZ Okpala (protocols) remains out for the Heat, with Gabe Vincent (knee) probable.
The Lakers remain without LeBron James (ankle), Anthony Davis (calf ) and Jared Dudley (knee), with all three listed as out. Listed as probable for the Lakers are Andre Drummond (toe) and Kyle Kuzma (calf ).