Bam exits early, Heat’s play-in magic and season over after heartbreaking OT loss to Hornets
Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 127-126 season-ending overtime loss to the Charlotte Hornets on Tuesday night at Spectrum Center in a win-or-go-home play-in tournament game:
After losing captain and three-time All-Star center Bam Adebayo to a lower back injury early in the second quarter, the Heat still battled to keep its season alive. But in the end, the Heat’s play-in magic and season is over.
After qualifying for the playoffs through the NBA’s play-in tournament in each of the last three seasons, the Heat couldn’t do it for a fourth straight year.
The Heat led by four points with 28 seconds left in the fourth quarter, but the Hornets rallied to force overtime behind a clutch game-tying three-pointer from Coby White with 10.8 seconds left in regulation.
The Hornets then outscored the Heat 13-12 in overtime to escape with the one-point win.
It was a dramatic back-and-forth affair until the final possession of the contest, as the Hornets looked to be in control with a five-point lead and just 26 seconds left in overtime.
But Heat guard Tyler Herro scored six straight points on a corner three-pointer and three free throws after being fouled on a three-point attempt to give Miami a one-point advantage with 8.7 seconds remaining in overtime.
The Hornets then called timeout to draw up a play for guard LaMelo Ball, and it worked. Ball got to the basket and made a tough layup over Miami forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. to put Charlotte back ahead by one point with 4.7 seconds remaining in overtime, and that turned out to be game-winning basket.
With no timeouts remaining, the Heat had no choice but to race down the court and try to put up a shot to win the game before the overtime buzzer sounded. But Heat guard Davion Mitchell’s layup was blocked by Miles Bridges, clinching the Hornets’ win.
“I thought we had the game won a few times,” Heat guard Norman Powell said. “It’s just tough.”
With the Heat needing to win back-to-back elimination play-in tournament games just to make the playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s No. 8 seed after finishing the regular season in 10th place in the East, the Heat couldn’t get past the first elimination play-in game this time.
Tuesday’s loss ended the Heat’s season and streak of six consecutive playoff seasons. This is the first season that the Heat has missed the playoffs since the 2018-19 campaign.
With the win, the Hornets advance to take on the loser of Wednesday’s play-in tournament matchup between the Orlando Magic and Philadelphia 76ers. The Hornets will travel to either Orlando or Philadelphia to take on the loser of Wednesday’s contest in another win-or-go-home play-in game on Friday, and the winner of Friday’s matchup will be the East’s No. 8 playoff seed.
The Heat battled hard to try to survive playing without Adebayo for most of Tuesday’s game, but ultimately couldn’t close the door on the Hornets. Adebayo left Tuesday’s play-in contest with 10:58 in the second quarter and did not return after suffering a lower back injury on a hard fall.
The game was competitive from start to finish, as it included 16 lead changes and 17 ties.
The Heat managed to enter halftime with a narrow 54-52 lead despite Adebayo’s exit early in the second quarter.
The Heat even pulled ahead by five points with 3:56 left in the third quarter, but the Hornets closed the period on a 15-4 run to take a six-point lead into the fourth quarter.
It looked like the Hornets were then going to pull away from the Heat, pushing their lead to eight points with 10:22 to play.
But that’s when the Heat went on a timely 17-2 run to flip the game and take a seven-point lead with 6:17 left in the fourth quarter.
After the Hornets issued their own response to tie the score at 102 with 4:27 to play, Andrew Wiggins hit back-to-back threes to put the Heat back ahead by six points with 3:30 remaining in the fourth quarter.
But overtime was still needed to decide the game, even after Jaquez made one of two free throws to put the Heat ahead by four points with 28 seconds to play.
Hornets forward Brandon Miller came right back down and hit a three-pointer to cut the deficit to just one point with 18.6 seconds left.
The Hornets then intentionally fouled Herro with 12.9 seconds to play to preserve the clock. Herro made both free throws to extend the Heat’s lead to three.
With one final chance to send the game to overtime, Hornets guard Coby White delivered in the clutch to make a contested three-pointer in front of the Heat’s bench to tie the score at 114 with 10.8 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
The Heat still had an opportunity to avoid overtime, but Herro missed what would have been a game-winning three-pointer at the fourth-quarter buzzer.
The Hornets then won the game in overtime by one point.
“Overall, it was a great basketball game,” Herro said. “It just sucks to obviously be on the wrong side of it, but it was a wild game. It was a very highly competitive basketball game.”
Ball led the Hornets, totaling a game-high 30 points, five rebounds and 10 assists.
For the Heat, Mitchell scored a team-high 28 points on 12-of-24 shooting from the field and 4-of-9 shooting on threes, six assists, two steals, one block and zero turnovers.
Wiggins added 27 points on 10-fo-17 shooting from the field and 4-of-8 shooting from three-point range, seven rebounds and three assists.
Herro finished with 23 points on 7-of-18 shooting from the field, 3-of-6 shooting on threes and 6-of-6 shooting from the foul line, three rebounds and six assists.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of with our locker room right now from this game,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “I say it all the time, what you want is you want to feel like you’re worthy to win. I think our guys felt like they were worthy to win. Tonight, we just didn’t win the game. And that can happen as well. That’s what we’ll have to live with in the offseason.”
After going away from the Adebayo-Ware frontcourt in recent weeks, the Heat began the postseason with that double-big starting lineup.
The Heat opened Tuesday’s play-in contest with a starting lineup of Mitchell, Herro, Wiggins, Adebayo and Kel’el Ware.
It marked just the second game that this lineup has started this season, with this group’s first start coming in Sunday’s regular-season finale.
This five-man group had only played seven minutes together this season prior to making its first start of the season together on Sunday.
But that lineup’s only stint of the game on Tuesday came to begin the contest since Adebayo did not play the final three quarters due to his lower back injury.
The Heat outscored the Hornets 13-12 in the 5:01 that this lineup played on Tuesday.
“What we felt was we wanted to get into the game with a little bit more size to control the paint and control the backboard,” Spoelstra said of the decision to start the Adebayo-Ware frontcourt in what turned out to be the Heat’s only postseason game this year. “Then we’d get into the rotation from there. That tends to give us a little bit more flexibility as you get into the game at the end of the first quarter, end of the third quarter. They were good. They’ve built enough continuity over the last several weeks that we felt we could do it in a big game like this.”
Using the Adebayo-Ware frontcourt to begin the postseason represented a vote of confidence from Spoelstra after he went away from the double-big look at times this season. While Adebayo is a fixture in the Heat’s starting lineup, Ware has toggled between starting alongside Adebayo and playing as the backup center off the bench in his second NBA season.
But Spoelstra started Adebayo and Ware together in each of the final two regular-season games and stuck with the Adebayo-Ware frontcourt for Tuesday’s postseason contest.
Adebayo’s early exit became one of the big stories of the game.
Adebayo took a hard fall on his backside while trying to save a ball from going out of bounds in the opening minute of the second quarter. Ball tripped Adebayo, with Ball swiping and making contact with Adebayo’s lower leg.
Adebayo stayed down on the court writhing in pain, forcing the Heat to call a timeout.
During the timeout, the entire Heat team went over to check on Adebayo. He eventually stood up and walked slowly back to the locker room.
Adebayo recorded six points, three rebounds and one assist in 12 minutes before exiting Tuesday’s game.
“That was definitely a gut punch,” Wiggins said of losing Adebayo early in the contest. “The leader of the team, captain of the team. So seeing him go down, definitely tough. But the guys tried to rally around that, keep pursuing and get the win. But we fell short.”
After Tuesday’s loss, Spoelstra was angry that Ball wasn’t ejected from the game for tripping Adebayo.
“He should be penalized for that,” Spoelstra said. “I don’t think that belongs in the game, tripping guys, shenanigans.”
Adebayo declined to speak to the media after Tuesday’s season-ending defeat.
Jaquez started the second half in Adebayo’s place.
With Adebayo out for most of Tuesday’s contest, the Heat needed to rely on Ware to play a bigger role.
Ware was impressive in the season-ending loss, finishing with 12 points, 19 rebounds and five blocks in 42 minutes.
Tuesday’s loss means the Heat will be part of the May 10 NBA Draft Lottery.
The Heat will either have a 4.8 percent or 7.1 percent chance to land a top-four selection in the first round of the draft, depending on how the Phoenix Suns fare on the Western Conference side of the play-in tournament.
If the Suns make the playoffs, the Heat would be the 13th lottery seed and have a 4.8 percent chance of a top-four pick and a 1 percent chance of landing the No. 1 pick. In that scenario, Miami would select ahead of the other East team that misses the playoffs.
If the Suns miss the playoffs, the Heat would be the 12th lottery seed and have 7.1 percent chance of a top-four pick and a 1.5 percent chance of getting the No. 1 pick.
The reason for that: If the Suns and Heat miss the playoffs, two lottery teams would have better records than the Heat — Phoenix and the other Eastern Conference team (besides Miami) that misses the playoffs. Those teams would be 13th and 14th, meaning the Heat would be slotted 12th.
The Suns fell to the Portland Trail Blazers in a play-in game on Wednesday, and now have one more opportunity to make the playoffs on Friday against the loser of Wednesday’s play-in matchup between the Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors. If the Suns lose Friday’s game, they will miss the playoffs.
The NBA Draft Lottery determines only the top four picks. Every other pick is based on inverse order of records.
So now that the Heat won’t be in the playoffs, it will either have the first, second, third, fourth, 12th, 13th or (unlikely) 14th pick in this year’s draft.
The last time the Heat was in the draft lottery, it came away with the 13th pick in 2019. Miami used that selection to draft Herro.
Since Pat Riley joined the organization in 1995, the Heat has only made a top-four pick in the draft once. That’s when Miami selected Michael Beasley with the No. 2 overall pick in 2008.
The Heat also has a second-round pick in this year’s draft, which comes at No. 41 overall. This is the second-round pick that the Heat received from the Hornets to resolve a dispute over Terry Rozier being under NBA and federal investigation over alleged gambling when Charlotte traded him to Miami in January 2024.
The two-day NBA Draft will take place on June 23 and 24 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
The Heat enters an offseason that will again be filled with important roster decisions.
Aside from being armed with a lottery pick and a second-round selection in this year’s draft, the Heat also already has 12 players under standard contracts for next season: Adebayo, Herro, Wiggins, Mitchell, Nikola Jovic, Ware, Jaquez., Kasparas Jakucionis, Dru Smith (fully nonguaranteed $2.6 million for next season), Pelle Larsson ($2.3 million team option), Myron Gardner ($250,000 of $2.6 million salary guaranteed for next season) and Jahmir Young (fully nonguaranteed $2.4 million for next season).
The only three players on the Heat’s season-ending 15-man standard roster who are set to enter free agency this upcoming summer are Powell (unrestricted free agent), Fontecchio (unrestricted free agent) and Keshad Johnson (restricted free agent).
However, Wiggins can become a free agent this upcoming summer because he has a $30.2 million player option in his contract that he must decide on by June 29.
The Heat also has a few extension decisions to make.
Herro, who still has one more year left on his current contract, is eligible to sign an extension worth as much as $206.9 million over four seasons this offseason. That negotiating window will open July 1, 2026 and close on June 30, 2027.
Powell is already eligible for an extension worth as much as $128.5 million over four years. If Powell can’t agree to an extension with the Heat by June 30, he would become an unrestricted free agent this summer.
Jaquez, who still has one more season left on his rookie-scale contract, is eligible for a five-year extension at a maximum of about $245 million this summer. That negotiating window begins on July 1, 2026 and closes the day before the start of the 2026-27 regular season.
Larsson becomes eligible to sign an extension with the Heat starting on July 6 after the Heat picks up the option in his contract ahead of the June 29 option deadline, and the window to sign an extension remains open until June 30, 2027. He’ll become eligible to sign an extension worth up to $93 million over four years this summer.
All the while, the Heat is expected to again pursue a trade for disgruntled Milwaukee Bucks two-time NBA MVP and nine-time All-NBA forward Giannis Antetokounmpo this offseason.
This story was originally published April 14, 2026 at 10:36 PM.
