Heat ready for playoff push and series vs. Hawks: ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for’
The Miami Heat’s playoff run didn’t last long last season. The Heat was swept out of the first round of the playoffs by the eventual NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks.
The top-seeded Heat hopes this season’s playoff experience lasts a lot longer, as it prepares to open the postseason with Game 1 of its best-of-7 first-round series against the Atlanta Haws on Sunday (1 p.m., TNT and Bally Sports Sun).
“We don’t get too caught up in the past. We don’t get too caught up in the future either,” Heat star Jimmy Butler said when asked about the motivation drawn from last season’s early playoff exit. “We know our goal is to win 16 games. But we got to get through the first one first and then the second one, all the way down the line. So last year, two years, three years ago, that’s nothing. We’re locked in on right now.”
Right now, the Heat will open the playoffs against a Hawks team that has played better in recent weeks and features one of the NBA’s most talented offensive players in superstar guard Trae Young.
Young led the Hawks on a surprising run to the Eastern Conference finals last season and is looking to make the same playoff push this season as the East’s eighth seed. Young was the NBA’s fourth leading scorer with 28.4 points per game and ranked third with the 9.7 assists per game this season, becoming just the second player in NBA history to finish a regular season as the league leader in both total points and assists.
“Trae is going to do him,” Heat point guard Kyle Lowry said. “Trae is going to have his great games, he’s going to have some highlights, he’s going to do whatever he’s got to do to try to help his team win. He’s one of the most dynamic point guards we have in our league now. You just have to know that he’s going to do some spectacular things. But we do have to wear on him, make things a little bit tougher, however that is.”
Nobody in the NBA was used as the ball-handler in pick-and-rolls more often than Young this season. There’s a good reason for that, with Young thriving in those situations and ranking in the 80th percentile in the league with 0.97 points per each of those possessions.
The Heat’s strategy against Young in the past has been to mix up coverages and throw different defenders at him to keep him off balance. That will likely be the plan again with a plethora of quality players it can use to guard Young like Caleb Martin, Lowry, Gabe Vincent, Butler, P.J. Tucker and even Bam Adebayo on switches.
“This is going to take a full team focus and effort,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of defending Young. “He’s that kind of player that requires a deeper scouting report. But that’s what you’re dealing with in the playoffs. You’re not going to be facing teams that don’t have studs and guys that can really change a game. He’s playing great basketball and he loves this kind of environment.”
The Heat is the clear favorite over the Hawks in the series as the No. 1 seed facing the No. 8 seed. Another advantage on Miami’s side is the week-long break it had between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs, while Atlanta played two play-in games this week just to earn a playoff berth and only has about 40 hours to rest and recover between Friday’s win in Cleveland and Sunday’s 1 p.m. tipoff in Miami.
“This is essentially like they’ve had two playoff games before the playoffs started,” Spoelstra said of the Hawks. “So it kind of sharpens the sword. But we’ve been doing the same thing here [in practice this week]. Iron sharpens iron, and that’s what we’ve been working on the best that we possibly can to prepare and get ready.”
Miami also defeated Atlanta in three of their four meetings during the regular season, although both teams were missing key players in nearly all of their matchups.
Just a week ago, the Heat edged out a 113-109 victory over the Hawks on April 8 at FTX Arena. Atlanta and Miami’s first three matchups of the season came in a span of 10 days in January.
“We’re playing an Eastern Conference team, so we’ve played them four times,” Spoelstra said. “It’s unique because we played them three times in 10 days just two months ago. I think both teams are very familiar with each other.”
The Heat’s roster is also very familiar with what it takes to make a deep playoff run, even after last season’s first-round exit.
Six players remain from the Heat’s roster that advanced to the NBA Finals in 2020 before losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in the Walt Disney World Bubble. In addition, Lowry won the NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, Heat forward Markieff Morris won the title with the Lakers in 2020, Tucker became an NBA champion with the Milwaukee Bucks last season, and team captain Udonis Haslem is seeking his fourth ring with the Heat.
“We’ve done so much from Day 1 to build to this point,” Tucker said. “We talked about winning the East, we talked about doing all the little things that we’ve done. We’ve managed to figure out different guys in and out, different lineups, all the different things. But to get to this point now where it’s game on, this is what we’ve been waiting for.”
Waiting for another opportunity to be a part the final team standing.
“It’s a high that you’re chasing,” Lowry said. “You want to get back to that high and you want to stay at that high. When you win one, you want that high right away. You want that high, it’s a high you can’t match. I’m just being honest. It’s still there, that fire is burning. I’m just chasing that high right now.”
This story was originally published April 16, 2022 at 3:52 PM.
