How the Heat fared vs. four potential first-round playoff opponents, as unique week begins
The Miami Heat will start the week with a few days off to rest and recover from a long regular season. Then the Heat will begin its on-court preparation for the start of the playoffs by the middle of the week. But the Heat won’t know its first-round opponent until the end of the week.
The top-seeded Heat will need to wait until Friday to learn which team it will face in a best-of-7 first-round playoff series, which will begin Sunday at FTX Arena. Along with the opponent, the time of Game 1 is also still to be determined.
“We don’t feel like we have to cram for a test,” coach Erik Spoelstra said after the Heat closed the regular season Sunday with the best record in the Eastern Conference at 53-29. “That’s the whole point of all these experiences together. So we’ll ramp it up in the middle of the week and we’ll just make sure we’re working on our habits, our rhythm. Then when we finally get the nod of who we’re playing, we’ll dial into the details of our specific opponent.”
There are four potential first-round opponents for the Heat: the seventh-place Brooklyn Nets, eighth-place Cleveland Cavaliers, ninth-place Atlanta Hawks and 10th-place Charlotte Hornets. Those four teams will take part in a play-in tournament that begins Tuesday and runs through Friday to determine the Nos. 7 and 8 playoff seeds in the East, as the Heat will meet the eighth seed in the first round.
The Heat will have a few practices this week before it even knows the team it will be matched up against to open the postseason. But Miami’s opponent faces an even bigger challenge, as whichever team faces the Heat will have just one day off between clinching the East’s eighth seed on Friday night and Game 1 on Sunday.
The week-long break also helps the Heat’s roster return to as close to 100 percent as possible for the start of the playoffs. Starting forward P.J. Tucker will be re-evaluated in the coming days after missing the final two games of the regular season with a right calf strain, and starting center Bam Adebayo is hoping to be cleared to rejoin the team later this week after entering COVID-19 protocols on Sunday.
“The emphasis will be on us, just getting better,” Heat forward Duncan Robinson said. “At the end of the day on Sunday, you just got to be ready to win one game. We feel like with at least five days, we can find a way to do that.”
But the Heat won’t need to prepare for four different teams all week. The list of potential first-round opponents will be trimmed to three soon, as the winner of Tuesday’s play-in game between the No. 7 Nets and No. 8 Cavaliers at Barclays Center (7 p.m., TNT) will clinch the conference’s No. 7 playoff seed and a first-round series against the second-seeded Boston Celtics.
The rest of the East’s play-in tournament includes a matchup between the No. 9 Hawks and No. 10 Hornets on Wednesday in Atlanta (7 p.m., ESPN). The loser of this game will be eliminated from playoff contention, while the winner will move one step closer to qualifying for the playoffs.
The loser of the Nets-Cavaliers matchup will host the winner of the Hawks-Hornets matchup on Friday (Time TBD, ESPN), and the winner of that game will clinch the eighth playoff seed in the East and a first-round series against the Heat.
“I think it will be good entertainment,” Spoelstra said of the play-in tournament. “Our video room and scouting department will be watching with a different lens than I’ll be watching it. I don’t want to stress myself out on all the different possibilities before we actually get to know who we play.”
The Heat won the regular-season series against three of its four potential first-round opponents — 3-1 vs. Nets, 3-1 vs. Hawks and 4-0 vs. Hornets. Miami finished the regular season with a 1-2 record against Cleveland.
▪ vs. Nets: The Heat shot just 31.1 percent on threes in its four games against the Nets this season. But Brooklyn wasn’t much better, shooting 33.3 percent on threes against Miami. The Heat gained the edge in this matchup in other areas, outscoring the Nets 57-39 in second-chance points, 188-174 in paint points and 87-66 at the free-throw line. Of course, it’s hard to take too much away from these matchups because Brooklyn’s superstar duo of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving were both available for just one of the four games against Miami, and the Nets cruised to a 15-point road win in that contest on March 26.
▪ vs. Hawks: Atlanta’s defense did little to slow the Heat’s offense this season, as Miami shot 50.9 percent from the field and 39.7 percent from three-point range to score at an elite rate of 119.5 points per 100 possessions in the four-game season series between the two teams. Atlanta’s only win against Miami came in a narrow 110-108 victory at State Farm Arena on Jan. 21, when the Hawks shot 55.9 percent from the field, 14 of 33 (42.4 percent) on threes and 20 of 24 (83.3 percent) from the foul line behind 28 points from star Trae Young.
▪ vs. Cavaliers: Much of the Cavaliers’ success against the Heat this season came because of Cleveland’s quality defense. The Cavaliers, which closed the regular season with the NBA’s fifth-best defensive rating, held the Heat to less than 100 points in both of their wins against Miami. But the Heat’s leading duo of Adebayo and Jimmy Butler missed both of those games because of injuries. The Heat’s only win over the Cavaliers this season came in a 117-105 victory at FTX Arena on March 11, as Adebayo and Butler proved to be the difference by combining for 54 points.
▪ vs. Hornets: The Heat crushed the Hornets this season, outscoring Charlotte by 16.5 points per game in the teams’ four matchups. Charlotte shot only 29.4 percent on threes and 69.8 percent from the foul line against Miami this season, as the Heat came away with a 171-135 edge from three-point range. Adebayo, Butler and Tyler Herro each averaged more than 20 points per game against the Hornets.
“Whoever it will be in the East, we’ve played them three or four times already,” Spoelstra pointed out. “That will be ample prep to be able to get ready for Game 1. Once you get past Game 1, it becomes much different anyway. But this is what the six months of a regular season are there for is to build all the appropriate habits to get you ready for that second season.”
This story was originally published April 11, 2022 at 10:25 AM.
