Heat left with little room for error in final 10 games: ‘Every game at this point is a must-win’
There are two important items at the top of the Miami Heat’s to-do list in the final weeks of the regular season.
Get healthy and avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament.
But Miami’s season-long injury issues persist, as the Heat were without rotation regulars Jimmy Butler (non-COVID illness), Tyler Herro (right foot medial tendintis), Kevin Love (bruised right heel) and Duncan Robinson (left facet syndrome) in Tuesday night’s 113-92 loss to the Golden State Warriors at Kaseya Center. The Heat also remains without Josh Richardson, who is out for the season after undergoing surgery on his right shoulder earlier this month.
And a play-in tournament appearance for the second straight season remains a very real possibility for the Heat, which entered Wednesday in seventh place in the Eastern Conference standings. The Heat must finish the regular season as a top-six team in the East to directly qualify for the playoffs without needing to take part in the play-in tournament.
“Our guys understand,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said in reference to what’s at stake in the coming days and weeks, with the team now entering a two-day break before closing its four-game homestand on Friday against the Portland Trail Blazers. “Our guys are not ignorant and our guys are extremely competitive.”
The problem for the Heat is time is running out to get healthy and avoid the play-in tournament. There are just 10 games left on the Heat’s regular-season schedule.
While Butler’s absence is due to a short-term illness and he’s expected back as soon as Friday against the Trail Blazers, there’s not as much clarity regarding the statuses of Herro, Love and Robinson.
▪ Herro has missed the last 16 games, but there’s hope that he’ll be able to return before the end of the regular season. He received a platelet-rich plasma injection on March 15 to treat his injured right foot and was expected to be re-evaluated in one to two weeks from that date, with this upcoming Friday marking two weeks since that injection.
▪ Love has missed the last 14 games, but may be nearing his return if the injury report is any indication. He was upgraded to questionable for Tuesday’s matchup against the Warriors before he was ruled out for the contest just a few hours prior to tip-off. It marked the first time Love has been upgraded on the injury report since he injured his heel during a Feb. 27 win over the Trail Blazers.
▪ Robinson has missed the last four games with a back issue that has been diagnosed by the team as left facet syndrome. He’s not expected to miss an extended stretch because of this injury, but no definitive timetable has been given by the team. The Heat has labeled Robinson as day-to-day.
This has been a season-long problem for the Heat, which entered Wednesday with the fourth-most missed games in the league this season due to injuries at 250 games, according to Spotrac’s injury tracker. The only teams with more missed games because of injuries this season are three of the NBA’s worst teams — the Memphis Grizzlies (451 missed games), Trail Blazers (274 games) and Charlotte Hornets (258 games).
Those injuries have forced the Heat to set a new franchise record with 35 different starting lineups used this season. The previous Heat record for most different starting lineups used in a season was 31 in the 2014-15 season.
The Heat’s next injury report for Friday’s game will come on Thursday afternoon.
“We’re just trying to find ways to win games,” Heat forward Haywood Highsmith said. “We got 10 games left, so just trying to finish the season strong. Trying to build some momentum heading into the playoffs, whether that’s in the play-in or not in the play-in.”
The play-in tournament, which is done during the week between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs, features the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference.
The Heat entered Wednesday in seventh place in the East — 1.5 games behind the sixth-place Indiana Pacers and ahead of the eighth-place Philadelphia 76ers only because Miami currently holds the head-to-head tiebreaker. There are important games remaining on the Heat’s schedule against both teams — vs. the 76ers in Miami on April 4 and vs. the Pacers in Indianapolis on April 7 — that will help determine the final tiebreakers.
According to Basketball Reference’s playoff probabilities report, the Heat currently has just a 20.6 percent chance of finishing with a top-six seed in the East to make the playoffs without needing to take part in the play-in tournament. That model has the Heat with no chance to close as the No. 1 or No. 2 seeds, 0.1 percent for a No. 3 finish, 0.8 percent for No. 4, 4.3 percent for No. 5 and 15.5 percent for No. 6.
Basketball Reference’s modeling has the Heat’s most likely finish listed at 42.4 percent for eighth place in the East (and a spot in the play-in tournament), which would have Miami playing its first play-in tournament game on the road. The Heat would host the first play-in tournament game if it finishes the regular season in seventh place.
“I looked at the standings a couple times, I’m pretty sure we can catch the sixth seed if we put some wins together,” Highsmith said. “I don’t know about the fifth seed or fourth seed. But right now we’re seventh, that’s the reality and we got to live in that. We’ll figure out ways to get some wins in these next games coming up and see if we can move up in the rankings. If we can’t, we’ll stay where we’re at and figure out a way to win the play-in game and get ready for the actual playoffs.”
One thing that should help the Heat is the fact that it entered Wednesday with the NBA’s second-easiest remaining schedule, according to Tankathon.com, based on the current combined winning percentage of teams left to play.
That soft schedule begins immediately, with the Heat’s next two games coming against the 14th-place team in the Western Conference (the Trail Blazers on Friday at home) and 14th-place team in the East (the Washington Wizards on Sunday on the road).
The Heat has left itself with very little room for error over its final 10 games. Heat coaches and players understand their situation.
“I feel like every game at this point is a must-win,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. “You start to understand it starts to become playoff time.”
This story was originally published March 27, 2024 at 11:02 AM.
