One-game danger of play-in finally costs Heat, as offseason of uncertainty begins
The Miami Heat put itself in a position to win Tuesday’s elimination play-in tournament game a few times before suffering a heartbreaking one-point overtime loss to the Charlotte Hornets at Spectrum Center that ended its season. The problem is the Heat also put itself in a position with no margin for error after an underwhelming regular season led to a 10th-place finish in the Eastern Conference for the second straight year.
“I think with everything that we dealt with this season, we obviously dug ourselves a hole and made the bed that we laid in tonight,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said following Tuesday’s season-ending loss. “We had opportunities all year to get out of the play-in.”
Instead, the Heat found itself in the NBA’s play-in tournament for the fourth straight year. And after finding a way to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tourney in each of the previous three seasons, the Heat couldn’t find a way to do it this season.
With the Heat needing to win back-to-back elimination play-in tournament games on the road just to make the playoffs as the East’s No. 8 seed after closing the regular season as the conference’s 10th-place team, the Heat couldn’t get past the first elimination play-in game this time. The Heat fell to the Hornets 127-126 in overtime on Tuesday to miss the playoffs for the first time since the 2018-19 campaign.
“The experience is what the play-in has been for us,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, with the team set to hold exit interviews with the media on Thursday at Kaseya Center. “Every game we’ve played, except for one of them, it’s just been down to the wire. It is harrowing. You have no idea what’s going to happen.”
In other words, the one-game danger of the play-in tournament finally cost the Heat this season after surviving it for three straight years. Miami limped to the postseason after dropping 10 of its final 15 regular-season games, and then its season came to a sudden end Tuesday.
“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.”
The Heat needed to play most of Tuesday’s elimination game without captain and three-time All-Star center Bam Adebayo, who left early in the second quarter with a lower back injury after taking a hard foul and never returned. It was a microcosm of the Heat’s injury-plagued season in which Herro missed 49 games and Norman Powell missed 24 games.
The Heat also wasted a few opportunities to keep its season alive Tuesday, leading by four points with 28 seconds left in the fourth quarter and holding a one-point lead with 8.7 seconds remaining in overtime before still losing in the end.
“If you’re going to be in the play-in or you’re going to be in the playoffs, you’re going to put yourself out there,” Spoelstra said. “That’s what competition is. You put yourself out there, and you don’t know what the result is going to be. There’s nothing to be ashamed of with our locker room right now from this game.
“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.”
It’s an offseason filled with important decisions for a Heat team that has not gotten past the first round of the playoffs since the 2022-23 season. Miami was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in 2024 and 2025 before missing the playoffs this year.
The Heat will be in the NBA Draft Lottery on May 10 for the first time since 2019. Miami will either have a 4.8% or 7.1% chance to land a top-four selection in the first round of this year’s draft, depending on how the Phoenix Suns fare on the Western Conference side of the play-in tournament.
The Heat also has three players on its season-ending 15-man standard roster who are set to enter free agency this summer: Powell (unrestricted free agent), Simone Fontecchio (unrestricted free agent) and Keshad Johnson (restricted free agent).
Heat starting forward Andrew Wiggins can also become a free agent this 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 and close on June 30, 2027.
Powell is already eligible for an extension worth as much as $128.5 million through 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.
Jaime Jaquez Jr., 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 and closes the day before the start of the 2026-27 regular season.
Pelle 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
“It’s something to learn from,” Heat guard Davion Mitchell said of the lessons to take away from this season. “We dealt with a lot of injuries, just like every other team. But we dealt with a lot of injuries, trying to get that rhythm, trying to get that chemistry. It was tough.
“But I think over time, obviously, we’ll see who’s going to be here next year. It’s kind of hard to say. No NBA team is always the same team.”
This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 12:32 PM.
