MIAMI — The final night of the NBA season will have meaning for the Miami Heat, but Erik Spoelstra’s team won’t necessarily be in control.

Already locked into a Nos. 9-10 play-in round opener against the Charlotte Hornets on either Tuesday or Wednesday, at stake Sunday will be the venue of that game.

With a Heat victory over the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday night at Kaseya Center and Hornets loss to the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, the Heat will move up to No. 9 and host the Hornets.

Should the Heat lose to the Hawks or the Hornets win in New York, then the Heat will be the Eastern Conference’s No. 10 seed for a second consecutive season and open the postseason on the road at Spectrum Center.

Ultimately, the Heat’s fate could be decided by the stakes (or lack thereof) for those four teams in those two games.

Not only will the Heat have something to play for Sunday, but the Hawks would wrap up the No. 5 seed in the East and a first-round matchup with the No. 4 Cleveland Cavaliers with a victory, otherwise left to depend on the No. 6 Toronto Raptors losing at home to the Brooklyn Nets.

However, the Hornets-Knicks game will have only one team with anything at stake, with the Knicks already locked into the No. 3 seed in the East, therefore likely to sit out some, if not all, of their rotation players.

Based on Sunday’s season-closing matchups and the most likely resulting seeds, the Heat postseason path would set up thusly:

— Play-in opener vs. Hornets, with the loser eliminated from the postseason and dropped into the NBA draft lottery.

— With a victory over the Hornets, the Heat then would face, on the road, the loser of the likely Nos. 7-8 matchup between the Orlando Magic and Philadelphia 76ers. The winner of such a Heat-Magic/76ers matchup would advance to the best-of-seven opening round of the playoffs, with the loser dropped into the draft lottery.

— Should the Heat win two play-in games, they would be seeded No. 8 for the playoffs and face the No. 1 Detroit Pistons in the best-of-seven opening round, setting a franchise record with a seventh consecutive playoff appearance.

The lottery

Should the Heat be eliminated in the play-in round, either by losing to the Hornets or losing in a second play-in game, they would be part of the random-but-weighted draft lottery for the first time since 2019, the season they drafted Tyler Herro at No. 13.

The order for the May 10 lottery will not be determined until after the play-in round is completed Friday.

Based on the current order and odds heading into Sunday’s full slate of 15 games featuring all 30 teams, the Heat are seeded No. 13 in the lottery.

That, at the moment, would leave the Heat with a 4.8% chance of a top-four selection and a 1% chance of the top overall pick in the draft. Only the first four picks of the draft are determined by the lottery drawing, with the rest of the first round determined by inverse order of record.

The best possible lottery position for the Heat would be a tie for No. 11, if the Phoenix Suns fail to advance out of the play-in round, the Golden State Warriors advance from the play-in round to the playoffs, and the Clippers and/or Trail Blazers win Sunday and then one of those two fails to make the playoffs.

The draft

As part of an NBA settlement over the Heat not being made fully aware of the gambling investigation into Terry Rozier ahead of the Heat’s January 2024 trade for the guard, the Heat from the Hornets will be receiving Golden State’s second-round pick in June.

That pick is now locked in at No. 41, based on the Warriors’ 37-44 record, and will not be impacted by Sunday’s results or the postseason.