For those searching for meaning in another middling season for the Miami Heat, the schedule has reached one of the team’s most meaningful games of the season.
The Heat, which continues to hover around .500 and had its three-game winning streak snapped with a disappointing 128-117 loss to the Giannis Antetokounmpo-less Bucks in Milwaukee on Tuesday night, will travel to face the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday at Xfinity Mobile Arena (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network Sun).
Thursday’s game is important to the Heat’s push to avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament for the first time in four years. After needing to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament in each of the last three seasons, the Heat again finds itself in play-in tournament territory with 23 games left this regular season.
“Good. I hope so,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said when asked about the pressure that comes with trying to escape the play-in tourney in the final weeks of the regular season. “That pressure is a privilege, and I want our locker room to feel that pressure. We need to push our game to a higher level.”
With the NBA’s play-in tourney featuring the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference, the Heat enters Wednesday in eighth place in the Eastern Conference standings.
After Tuesday’s loss to the Bucks, the eighth-place Heat (31-28) sits one game behind the seventh-place Orlando Magic (31-26), 1.5 games behind the sixth-place 76ers (32-26) and 3.5 games behind the fifth-place Toronto Raptors (34-24) in the East. The Heat needs to finish among the East’s top six teams to clinch a playoff spot without needing to take part in the play-in tournament.
It appears that the 76ers could be close to full health against the Heat, too, as star center Joel Embiid returned from a five-game absence stemming from right shin soreness and right knee injury management to play in Tuesday’s win against the Indiana Pacers and is listed as probable for Thursday’s matchup against the Heat. The 76ers are 20-12 in the 32 games that Embiid has played in this season.
But the 76ers will be without Paul George (league suspension) and Johni Broome (right knee meniscus tear). MarJon Beauchamp (G League) is doubtful to play.
The Heat listed starting guard Davion Mitchell as questionable for Thursday’s contest in Philadelphia because of an illness. The only players ruled out for the Heat are Nikola Jovic (lower back injury management) and Terry Rozier (not with team).
Along with needing a win on Thursday to move closer to catching Philadelphia in the standings, the Heat can also clinch the head-to-head tiebreaker over the 76ers with a victory. After defeating the 76ers in Philadelphia on Nov. 23 in the teams’ first of three meetings this regular season, the Heat can clinch the head-to-head tiebreaker over the 76ers with a win in either of the teams’ two remaining matchups.
According to Basketball Reference’s playoff probabilities report, the Heat entered Wednesday with a 44.4% 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.
As for the Heat dropping further in the East standings and completely falling out of the play-in tournament/playoff contention, that’s extremely unlikely with Basketball Reference’s playoff probabilities report giving only a 0.2% chance of that scenario. The Heat enters Wednesday 2.5 games ahead of the ninth-place Atlanta Hawks, three games ahead of the 10th-place Charlotte Hornets, 4.5 games ahead of the 11th-place Bucks and seven games ahead of the 12th-place Chicago Bulls.
But to get into the playoffs without needing to be in the play-in tournament, the Heat will need to be a lot better than it was in the final minutes of Tuesday’s road loss to the Bucks.
After taking a four-point lead into the fourth quarter, the Heat was crushed in the final period 39-24 on its way to a 128-117 loss to the Bucks. Miami didn’t make a field goal in the final 6:34 of the fourth quarter, missing its final six field-goal attempts of the game.
The Heat shot just 5 of 20 (25%) from the field and 3 of 14 (21.4%) on threes in the fourth quarter.
But Heat coaches and players still pointed to the team’s defense as one of its biggest problems in Tuesday’s defeat. The Heat allowed the Bucks to score at a rate of 121.9 points per 100 possessions for a defensive rating that would rank as the worst in the NBA among teams this season.
“Defensively, it just wasn’t a great game,” Spoelstra said. “It required a whole lot more. It started in the first quarter. That set the tone for the game, a 30-plus point quarter allowed and they started getting in rhythm. And then even as we took a three-point lead there late in the fourth, we couldn’t get enough stops to extend that lead. And so it just became make or miss for us offensively.”
The Heat, which still holds the NBA’s fourth-best defensive rating this season, fell to 1-12 this season when allowing more than 121 points per 100 possessions in a game.
“We just didn’t get enough stops, honestly,” Heat guard Norman Powell said after Tuesday’s loss to the Bucks. “They kept going back to the same play. And there are too many times where we messed up. Sometimes we got it right, sometimes we didn’t. And I think they were able to come through on that and they had confidence. And they started making the plays on the stretch, and we just weren’t able to get the stops we needed.”
Now, the Heat moves on to a game with stakes on Thursday against an even stronger opponent in the 76ers. The Heat will need to be much better than it was in Tuesday’s fourth quarter to avoid a winless two-game trip.
“They got really good players off the dribble,” Heat guard Davion Mitchell said of the 76ers. “Obviously, Tyrese Maxey is playing at a superstar level right now. So we got to find ways to swarm him, put two people on him. He can’t get any easy looks because that can get him going.”