The Miami Heat have struggled against the NBA’s top teams this season and those struggles have put the Heat in play-in tournament territory for the second straight season.
That trend continued during the Heat’s two-game winless road trip, which included back-to-back losses to two winning teams — a 114-108 loss to the Mavericks in Dallas on Thursday night and a 107-100 loss to the Thunder in Oklahoma City. Friday night. This is the first time the Heat have lost two games in a row since the last week of January.
“I mean, it’s a competition and we’re going to work together until we get that breakthrough,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “These are painful times. We had an opportunity in both games.
Those losses dropped the Heat to 14-20 on the season in games against teams that entered Saturday with a winning record. The Heat are also just 1-6 against all four teams (Boston Celtics, Thunder, Denver Nuggets and New Orleans Pelicans) with both a top 10 offense and a top 10 defense this season.
But the good news for the Heat is that they have reached a low point in their late-season schedule as they work to avoid the play-in tournament, with three of their next four games against teams who hold the last two NBA records. this season. It starts Sunday against the struggling Washington Wizards at Kaseya Center (6 p.m., Bally Sports Sun).
The Wizards enter with the worst record in the NBA (10-53) and lost 16 straight games before defeating the Charlotte Hornets on Friday.
The other two such games during this four-game stretch will be against the Pistons on March 15-17 during a weekend in Detroit. The Pistons entered Saturday with the second-worst record in the NBA, 10-52.
“Like every other game, with a sense of urgency,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said when asked how the team approaches these types of games. “So for us, it’s just about having the same sense of urgency as if we were playing someone else.”
Heat forward Caleb Martin added: “These are some of the toughest matches.”
While having issues against the NBA’s best, the Heat have taken care of business against inferior opponents this season. Miami is 21-8 this season in games against teams currently with a losing record.
It’s important for the Heat that their success against weaker opponents continues in the coming days as part of a tight Eastern Conference playoff race. The Heat (35-28) entered Saturday in sixth place in the East, just two games behind the fourth-place New York Knicks, but also just a half-game ahead of the eighth-place Indiana Pacers.
With just 19 games (11 home games and eight away games) remaining in the regular season, the Heat can realistically finish as high as fourth in the East to clinch home-court advantage in the first round playoffs or fall as far as eighth place and must qualify for the playoffs via the play-in tournament for the second consecutive season.
Earning a spot among the top six seeds in the playoffs is the most important item on the Heat’s to-do list, as it would keep Miami out of the play-in tournament, which features ranked teams seventh through 10th place competing for the final two playoff seeds. at each conference.
According to Basketball Reference’s playoff odds report, the Heat entered Saturday with a 51.9 percent chance of finishing 6th or better in the East to make the playoffs while avoiding the play-in tournament. This model has the Heat with no chance of closing the regular season as the No. 1 seed, 0.2 percent for a No. 2 spot, 2.6 percent for No. 3, 9.4 for percent for No. 4, 15.3 percent for No. 5 and 24.5 percent for No. 6.
One of the biggest factors working in the Heat’s favor is their remaining schedule. Miami entered Saturday with the second-easiest remaining schedule, according to Tankathon.combased solely on the current combined winning percentage of the teams remaining to play.
A big part of that schedule advantage lies in the four games remaining against the Wizards and Pistons, making this streak important for the Heat to seize. While three of those games will take place next week, the Heat will also travel to face the Wizards on March 31.
Aside from those four games, 10 of the Heat’s other remaining 15 regular season games will be against teams currently with winning records.
In fact, the only game sandwiched between these three matchups against the Wizards and Pistons over the next week will be one of the Heat’s toughest games of the season. The Heat host the Nuggets on Wednesday in a rematch of last season’s NBA Finals.
This game against the Nuggets will be the one that receives the hype, but the Heat are in no position to neglect the upcoming games against the Wizards and Pistons.
“There’s still time,” Heat star Jimmy Butler said of areas the team needs to improve on. “But damn, not too much time.”
