{"id":104838,"date":"2025-06-17T13:31:21","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T13:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/104838\/"},"modified":"2025-06-17T13:31:21","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T13:31:21","slug":"herro-heat-scorch-bulls-to-advance-in-nba-play-in-mavericks-upset-kings-basketball-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/104838\/","title":{"rendered":"Herro, Heat scorch Bulls to advance in NBA play-in, Mavericks upset Kings | Basketball News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miami Heat and Dallas Mavericks stay in the hunt for NBA\u2019s final Eastern and Western Conference playoff spots with dominant victories in the sudden death play-in games.<\/p>\n

Tyler Herro scored 38 points as the Miami Heat cruised past the Chicago Bulls 109-90 to keep their NBA Eastern Conference playoff hopes alive.<\/p>\n

Miami point guard Herro led from the front in a wire-to-wire victory on Wednesday that eliminated Chicago from postseason contention and sends the Heat into a winner-take-all play-in clash against the Atlanta Hawks on Friday.<\/p>\n

The winner of Friday\u2019s Miami-Atlanta game will advance to the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, where they will face No 1 seed Cleveland.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just came out in attack mode,\u201d Herro told ESPN after Wednesday\u2019s win.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a couple of days off since the last game \u2013 myself, my teammates and the coaching staff put in a lot of work and it paid off.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got one more to go. The job is not done yet, just to get in the playoffs. So we\u2019ve got a long way to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a bunch of guys who come in every day, put their hard hats on and they work. The season hasn\u2019t exactly gone how we wanted it to, but we continue to get better. There\u2019s a lot to look forward to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herro was backed by 20 points from Andrew Wiggins, while Bam Adebayo and Davion Mitchell scored 15 points apiece.<\/p>\n

Australian international Josh Giddey led Chicago\u2019s scorers with 25 points.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s win marked the third season in a row that Chicago have been eliminated from the play-in tournament by Miami.<\/p>\n

Miami, who finished 10th in the Eastern Conference regular season standings, were always in control after making a fast start against a surprisingly lacklustre Chicago lineup.<\/p>\n

Herro did most of the early damage, scoring from his first eight attempts to pour in 16 points in a 39-28 first quarter that left Miami in control at Chicago\u2019s United Center.<\/p>\n

A dominant second quarter \u2013 Miami outscoring Chicago 32-19 \u2013 left the Heat leading 71-47 with the Bulls seemingly powerless to halt the flow of Heat scoring.<\/p>\n

Although Chicago rallied in the third quarter, outscoring Miami 27-17, it was too little too late and the Heat closed out a comfortable win in the fourth.<\/p>\n

\"MiamiThe Miami Heat now play a winner-take-all, play-in clash against the Atlanta Hawks on Friday. The winner of that match will earn the eighth and final Eastern Conference playoff spot [Justin Casterline\/Getty Images via AFP]
\nMavericks dominate Kings out West<\/p>\n

In Wednesday\u2019s other play-in game, Anthony Davis and Klay Thompson combined for 50 points as the Dallas Mavericks brought the Sacramento Kings\u2019 season to a juddering halt with a 120-106 blowout on the road in California.<\/p>\n

The Mavericks, who scraped into the play-in tournament after finishing in 10th place in the Western Conference, seized control of the game in an explosive second quarter, outscoring Sacramento 44-19 to build a hefty double-digit advantage which they held for the remainder of the game.<\/p>\n

Former Golden State star Thompson rattled in 23 points while Davis, who joined Dallas in February from the Los Angeles Lakers following his former team\u2019s trade for Luka Doncic, finished with 27 points and nine rebounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re so desperate to keep the postseason alive,\u201d Thompson said afterwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a privilege to play basketball at this time of year. I told the guys before the game \u2018We have nothing to lose. Go out there with a free swing, play for each other and play free-minded.\u2019 Because that\u2019s when we\u2019re at our best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dallas will now play the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday with the winner advancing to a Western Conference, first-round playoff series against the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder.<\/p>\n

\"AnthonyAnthony Davis #3 of the Dallas Mavericks goes up for a shot on Keegan Murray #13 of the Sacramento Kings during the second half of the NBA play-in tournament game at Golden 1 Center on April 16, 2025, in Sacramento, California, US [Ezra Shaw\/Getty Images via AFP]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Miami Heat and Dallas Mavericks stay in the hunt for NBA\u2019s final Eastern and Western Conference playoff spots…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,686,149,4057,166,6,67,275,417,418],"class_list":{"0":"post-104838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-mavericks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-mavericks","11":"tag-dallasmavericks","12":"tag-mavericks","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-sport","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-us-canada"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114698956527223000","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}