Ahead of a brief few days holiday break, the Miami Heat will host the visiting Raptors in hopes of avoiding a three-game losing streak and falling to the .500 mark.
(Photo via Getty Images)

The Miami Heat are coming off a difficult three-game road trip in which they went 1-2. They have suffered back-to-back losses to the rival Boston Celtics and New York Knicks— without many answers in sight to snap out of this rough stretch.

For tonight, they will be back home to host another Eastern Conference playoff contender in the Toronto Raptors. Like the Heat, Toronto has also dropped in the standings from the beginning of the season. The Raptors have lost two in a row as well, and have gone 3-7 over their last 10 games.

However, Toronto beat the Heat just one week ago inside the Kaseya Center.

Miami has been a shell of the team that looked so encouraging in October and November. Their struggles have been on both sides of the court amid injuries, inconsistent rotations and what has looked like a disengaged roster as of late. The Heat have lost seven of their last eight games and will hope to avoid falling to an even 15-15 .500 record on the season.

The silver lining recently has been the re-emergence of Kel’el Ware, who is coming off a dominant 20 points and 19 rebounds double-double in the Knicks loss on Sunday. The expectation is that Ware will remain a starter again moving forward, as his performances have been the lone bright side over this past week.

Injury Report (at the time of this publishing):

Toronto Raptors:

RJ Barrett (knee) — OUT 

Jakob Poeltl (back) — OUT

Miami Heat:  

Tyler Herro (toe) — OUT

Nikola Jovic (elbow) — OUT

Pelle Larsson (ankle) — OUT

Jahmir Young (g-league) — DOUBTFUL

Terry Rozier (not with team) — OUT

Projected Starting 5 (subject to change):

Toronto Raptors:

Immanuel Quickley, G

Ochai Agbaji, G

Brandon Ingram, F

Scottie Barnes, F

Gradey Dick, C

Miami Heat:

Davion Mitchell, G

Norman Powell, G

Andrew Wiggins, F

Bam Adebayo, F/C

Kel’el Ware, C

Broadcast Info:

Tipoff: 7:30 PM EST

TV: FanDuel Sports Network Sun (Eric Reid & John Crotty)

Radio: AM 560 Sports WQAM & The HEAT Radio Network (Jason Jackson)

Spanish Radio: WAQI 710 AM & The HEAT Spanish Radio Network (José Pañeda)

Come back to Hot Hot Hoops at game time to join our GameThread and chat about the game live with other Heat fans!

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