The Miami Heat are right back where they\u2019re most comfortable, the NBA Play-In Tournament. The Heat are 40-37 and are the 10th seed in the Eastern Conference. Miami is headed toward the Play-In Tournament for the fourth straight season. <\/p>\n
So with that in mind, we asked our Sports Illustrated OnSI writers to weigh in: Are the Heat better off winning or losing in the play-in?<\/p>\n
Ethan J. Skolnick<\/p>\n
While it’s understandable that the majority of Miami Heat fans would prefer the team lose in the play-in, and move up a few slots in the draft order — and perhaps give themselves a better shot at the miracle they never get in the lottery — I’ll go the other way on this.<\/p>\n
If you’re going to tank, well, then, tank. But if you’ve come this far, even if it’s out of stubbornness or stupidity or whatever, you need to at least see it through.<\/p>\n
Yes, the Heat are likely five-game exits against any first round opponent, with maybe the Knicks presenting the best chance for a longer series, but there is some potential benefit to Kel’el Ware and Kasparas Jakucionis getting some playoff burn, until Erik Spoelstra sits them down. Might as well get a couple of home playoff games, and just hope they’re not as embarrassing as the two against Cleveland last season.<\/p>\n
Adam Simon and his scouting staff have shown that a couple of draft slots don’t really matter that much; they’ll find a good player in the first round, especially in a draft as deep as this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Miami Heat are right back where they\u2019re most comfortable, the NBA Play-In Tournament. The Heat are 40-37…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3778],"tags":[7,144,295,189,3881,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-695018","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-heat","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-heat","10":"tag-miami","11":"tag-miami-heat","12":"tag-miamiheat","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116338163907969353","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695018","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=695018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}