After the Chicago Bulls recognized they were on an endless road to nowhere and traded four players for four lesser players and nine second-round picks at the NBA’s trade deadline, former Denver Nuggets coach Mike Malone, in his ESPN studio role, justified it by saying that 10th place in a conference is the worst spot to be.
And that’s exactly where the Heat finds itself — for a second consecutive year — leaving its fans in something of a conflicted position as the season’s final days play out.
The root-for-wins Heat crowd can still find joy in getting to the playoffs the hard way — through the play-in round for a fourth year in a row — and can muster up hope that qualifying for the playoffs as an eighth seed presents an opportunity for a potentially competitive series against a Detroit team that has lost to Miami twice and also remains without All-Star guard Cade Cunningham, who has been sidelined by a collapsed lung.
The root-for-losses Heat crowd instead focuses entirely on the big picture, aware of the fact that advancing to the playoffs means a 0% percent chance of snagging a top-four pick in a talent-rich draft, while losing in the play-in (and finishing 10th in the East in the coming days) gives the Heat anywhere from a 4.8% to 9.4% chance of landing a top-four pick.
Andrew Wiggins peers at the Eastern Conference standings and remains convinced the Heat is better than some teams above it.
“One hundred percent; we know,” Wiggins said. “But that’s the way the NBA is. The season goes, you let games you should have won get away from you and they come back to bite you in the [butt] at the end of the season.”
This is what Wiggins struggles to reconcile: “You look at the numbers, we’re top five offense and defense. History shows when you are in the top five of offense and defense, you are usually a team that has a chance to win it [all]. We have everything we need.”
To mix a metaphor, Wiggins is essentially mixing his apples and oranges. The Heat is second in the league in scoring at 120.8 points per game (behind Denver) and was fourth in points allowed per 100 possessions three weeks ago — a statistic known as defensive rating.
Miami is now 11th in defensive rating, after a 10-game defensive swoon, and 12th in offensive rating (points per 100 possessions, at 115.4).
So how can he explain trailing teams that he believes aren’t as good as the Heat?
“The season is full of ups and downs,” he said. “We started really hot. Things happen, injuries happen. We never really had a full healthy squad for a long period of time. It happens. It’s the NBA.”
For the two factions of the Heat fan base, here’s what to know:
The make-the-playoffs crowd
Entering Monday night’s Pistons-Magic and 76ers-Spurs games, the No. 10 Heat (41-37) trailed No. 9 Orlando (42-36) by one game, No. 8 Charlotte (43-36) by 1.5 games, No. 6 Philadelphia (43-35) and No. 7 Toronto (43-35) by two games and No. 5 Atlanta (45-33) by four games.
Miami would win the tiebreaker against the 76ers and Hornets and lose the tiebreaker against Orlando and Toronto, no matter the results of Heat games at the Raptors on Tuesday (7:30 p.m., FanDuel Sports Sun) and Thursday.
Miami would win the tiebreaker with Atlanta if it beats the Hawks at Kaseya Center in the season finale at 6 p.m. Sunday. But the Heat catching the Hawks seems unlikely.
The Heat could jump Orlando if Miami wins both the Raptors games, wins at Washington on Friday and beats Atlanta and if the Magic loses two among Monday’s Detroit game and games against Minnesota at home and Chicago and Boston on the road.
Miami needs merely to finish with the same record as Charlotte to jump the Hornets in a two-team tie, which is realistic if the Heat closes 3-1 and the Hornets totally unravel in a difficult remaining schedule (at Boston, Detroit, at New York). But three-team ties involving Orlando leave the Heat in a bad spot, because of Miami’s 0-5 record against the Magic.
To catch the 76ers in a two-team tie, Miami would need two more wins than the 76ers during the final seven days, with the 76ers following Monday’s Spurs game with a matchup at Houston and Indiana and a home game against Milwaukee.
If Miami wins the two games in Toronto to pull even in the standings, Miami would need to still win one more game than the Raptors during the final three days of the season to finish ahead of Toronto, which closes with games at the Knicks and home to the Nets.
The ninth and 10th seeds must go 2-0 in the play-in to make the playoffs. The seventh and eighth seeds have two chances to win one game to make the playoffs. The Heat’s odds of moving out of the play-in (fifth or sixth) are extremely remote.
The increase-lottery-odds crowd
Fans who simply want the season to end and are hoping for the highest possible odds in the May 10 draft lottery must hope, for starters, that Miami finishes 10th in the East and, of course, loses in the play-in. That would likely leave the Heat picking no worse than 13th in the draft, with a chance to rise to the top four.
But if Miami has the best record of the teams that miss the playoffs, it would enter the lottery seeded 14th, which would give it only a 0.5 chance of landing the top pick and a 2.4 chance of snagging a top-four pick. Remember: After the top four picks are determined by lottery, the nonplayoff teams draft in inverse order of record.
That’s why Miami must hope that the other teams that lose in the play-in round have better records than the Heat. If Miami finishes 10th in the East and, say, Phoenix loses in the play-in round, Miami likely would move up to the 12th lottery seed, which carries a 1.5% chance of landing the top pick and a 7.1% chance of a top-four pick.
That’s because at least two of the four teams that lose in the play-in would have better records than Miami in that scenario, giving Miami a higher pick.
The Heat has a remote chance to move as high as the 11th lottery seed, which would happen if it has the worst record of the four teams ousted in the play-in. The 11th lottery seed has a 2% chance of snagging the top pick and 9.4% of landing a top-four pick.
Before the lottery, coin flips break ties between teams with the same record. By missing the playoffs, the Heat would pick either first, second, third or fourth (if it defies the odds) or 11th (unlikely), 12th (possible), 13th or 14th.
Miami Herald
Barry Jackson has written for the Miami Herald since 1986 and has written the Florida Sports Buzz column since 2002.