With Heat eliminated from in-season tourney, NBA announces two missing games on team’s schedule
The open week in the Miami Heat’s schedule is now full.
With the first full week in December left open on the NBA schedule because of the league’s inaugural In-Season Tournament, the Heat (10-8) learned early Wednesday morning that it will travel to Toronto to take on the Raptors (8-10) on Dec. 6 at 7:30 p.m. before hosting the Cleveland Cavaliers (10-8) in Miami on Dec. 8 at 8 p.m. Both games will be televised on Bally Sports Sun.
This comes after the introduction of the In-Season Tournament led to the NBA initially scheduling only 80 of each team’s 82 regular-season games because of the uncertainty surrounding which teams would advance past the group stage.
The Heat’s 131-124 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night on the final day of group play eliminated Miami from the tournament. The Heat closed the four-game group stage with a 2-2 record to finish in third place in its five-team group behind the first-place Bucks (4-0) and second-place New York Knicks (3-1).
Instead, the Heat is among the 22 teams that did not advance to the quarterfinals and will play two regular-season games on Dec. 6 and 8 to fill that open week in the schedule.
The eight teams that advanced to the knockout quarterfinal round of the tournament are the Indiana Pacers, Bucks, Boston Celtics and Knicks from the Eastern Conference, and the New Orleans Pelicans, Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers from the Western Conference.
The quarterfinals will take place on Monday and Tuesday in NBA markets. The Pacers will host the Celtics and the Kings will host the Pelicans on Monday, and the Bucks will host the Knicks and the Lakers will host the Suns on Tuesday.
The four teams that win their quarterfinal games advance to the neutral-site semifinals on Dec. 7, and then two teams will play in the championship game on Dec. 9. The semifinals and championship game of the event will be played at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
“I wish I had an opportunity to still be playing and go to Vegas and have the opportunity to play for something the inaugural year and winning it,” Heat guard Kyle Lowry said. “I think it’s going to be a really good thing.”
In scheduling the missing two games for the 22 teams that did not make the quarterfinals of the tournament, the NBA attempted to match up two teams from the same conference that were initially scheduled to face each other only three times instead of four.
That’s exactly what the league did with the Heat. The Raptors (two at home and one on the road) and Cavaliers (one at home and two on the road) are two of the six East teams that the Heat was originally scheduled to play only three times this season, but now Miami will face Toronto (two at home and two on the road) and Cleveland (two at home and two on the road) four times after the addition of next week’s games.
With the Raptors and Cavaliers now off the list, the four East teams that the Heat will only play three times this season are the Celtics, Pacers, Knicks and Bucks. All four teams advanced to the quarterfinals of the tournament, which eliminated them as potential Heat opponents for next week’s two open games.
Before facing the Raptors next week, the Heat closes its three-game homestand with two matchups against the Indiana Pacers on Thursday (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun and NBA TV) and Saturday. The Heat will then get three days off before taking on the Raptors in Toronto on Dec. 6.
The Heat then returns to Miami to host the Cavaliers on Dec. 8 before getting two days off and then traveling to take on the Hornets in Charlotte on Dec. 11.
“We still have a marathon to run,” Lowry said after being eliminated in the In-Season Tournament. “That was a sprint that we had just now with that opportunity. We obviously didn’t finish at the top of the sprint, but we still have a marathon to win.”
This story was originally published November 29, 2023 at 2:46 AM.
