Hoping to finish strong, the Miami Heat will play host to the Washington Wizards on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The Heat (40-37) have clinched a spot in the play-in round. They entered play on Friday in 10th place in the Eastern Conference, but they have five games left in the regular season and could move up in the standings.<\/p>\n
Miami also has a fairly soft schedule from here on out, including two games against NBA-worst Washington (17-59).<\/p>\n
The problem for the Heat, though, is that they are just 2-8 in their past 10 games, including a 147-129 loss to the visiting Boston Celtics on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Heat players such as Jaime Jaquez Jr. say they have not lost confidence.<\/p>\n
“We know what we’re capable of when we lock in,” Jaquez said.<\/p>\n
Jaquez said Miami is looking for a win “by any means necessary” down the stretch, and it would certainly help the Heat if Norman Powell can play.<\/p>\n
Powell, who leads Miami in scoring (22.1 points per game), missed the game against Boston due to illness.<\/p>\n
Miami’s other big scorers are Tyler Herro (21.4 ppg) and Bam Adebayo (20.3). Adebayo, of course, burned Washington for 83 points on March 10, and that was the second-greatest scoring game in NBA history.<\/p>\n
Since then, though, Miami is just 3-8, which Herro this week called “a terrible stretch.”<\/p>\n
Other Heat players to watch include point guard Davion Mitchell, who leads the team in assists (6.5); Jaquez, who is their top bench scorer (15.0); and Pelle Larsson, who does a lot of dirty work such as drawing charging calls. In addition, Andrew Wiggins averages 15.6 points and Kel’el Ware is a double-double threat (10.9 points, 9.0 rebounds).<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Wizards have lost 20 of their past 21 games as Washington fans are no doubt looking forward to potentially having the first pick in the 2026 NBA Draft.<\/p>\n
The team still is fighting hard, according to coach Brian Keefe.<\/p>\n
“Our guys are competitive,” Keefe said. “Even after a loss, they come back the next day ready to work and ready to get better. That’s been our thing all season.”<\/p>\n
The Wizards on Wednesday lost 153-131 to Philadelphia. In that game, Washington received a career-high 21 points from Anthony Gill, who played 35 minutes off the bench, going 3-for-3 on 3-pointers.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to disappoint my teammates,” Gill said of his thought process. “They put in so much hard work to get me the ball in a position to score — the least I can do is put the ball in the basket to get them an assist.”<\/p>\n
With stars such as Trae Young (quad) and Anthony Davis (finger) on the injured list, Gill said the final six games are about setting the tone for next season when — presumably — those guys will be healthy.<\/p>\n
“We have an opportunity,” Gill said. “We’re trying to build a foundation to move to something special next season. We have to finish strong no matter who is on the court.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hoping to finish strong, the Miami Heat will play host to the Washington Wizards on Saturday afternoon. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3780],"tags":[7,6,682,468,3892,683],"class_list":{"0":"post-696831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-wizards","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-washington","11":"tag-washington-wizards","12":"tag-washingtonwizards","13":"tag-wizards"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116343492645007476","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696831","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=696831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}