NEW YORK
If the Miami Heat’s surprising playoff run as the Eastern Conference’s No. 8 seed is making you question whether the regular season matters, know this: Heat coaches and players insist their turbulent regular season set them up for what has already been a historic postseason push.
“Just because the regular season didn’t go the way we wanted it to go or other people wanted it to go doesn’t mean that we weren’t developing grit and tough habits and good things,” coach Erik Spoelstra said following the Heat’s 108-101 win over the fifth-seeded New York Knicks on Sunday at Madison Square Garden to steal home-court advantage and take a 1-0 lead in the second-round playoff series.
After beginning April with a mediocre 40-37 record and needing two play-in games just to qualify for the playoffs, the Heat closed April just three wins away from advancing to the Eastern Conference finals for the second straight season and the third time in the last four seasons.
The Heat, which finished the regular season with a 44-38 record, eliminated the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the opening round to become only the sixth No. 8 seed to eliminate a No. 1 seed in the first round of the playoffs since the current 16-team NBA playoff format was instituted for the 1983-84 season.
The Heat is now vying to become only the second No. 8 seed to make it to the conference finals. The Knicks are the only team to pull that off since 1984 when they made it to the Eastern Conference finals before losing in the NBA Finals as the eighth seed in 1999.
“I think we just had to get here,” Heat wing Caleb Martin said of the team’s turnaround in the playoffs. “We’re just that type of group, we’re kind of a backs up against the wall type team. Now we got here, obviously we’re playing for something and guys don’t want to stop playing.”
The Heat is 5-1 in its first six playoff games, including 3-1 on the road, despite losing starting guard Tyler Herro in Game 1 of the first round and reserve guard Victor Oladipo in Game 3 of the first round.
The Heat will look to continue its winning ways in Game 2 of its second-round series against the Knicks on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden (7:30 p.m., TNT). But Miami may have to do it without its best player, as star Jimmy Butler’s status for the contest is up in the air after he sprained his right ankle in Sunday’s Game 1 win.
“I think we’re just kind of just playing through what we are,” Heat guard Kyle Lowry said when asked what has changed in the last few weeks. “I think we understand what we want to do every time we’re down on the floor offensively. I think we understand what we want to do defensively.
“We know where we want the ball to go, where we want the ball to be and on the defensive side we know where and how we want to play no matter what. There’s no confusion. Everybody is just on the same page.”
For perspective on how inconsistent the Heat has been, it went on a run of five wins in six games just once this regular season and it came in December. But Miami has done exactly that to begin the playoffs.
Is this Heat team just better suited for the playoffs than the regular season?
“We had our ups and downs,” Lowry continued. “But we have a team that’s made for situations where we can grind it out no matter what. We’re in a situation where we can grind it out, play the way we need to play. We got a situation where we got a guy like Bam [Adebayo] who can lock into a defensive scheme and then he can change schemes and do that, a guy like Jimmy who can come in and lock in to a defensive scheme. Then offensively, we play a pace that benefits us in the playoffs. Yes, we’ve been putting up a lot of points. But we can also play a pace where we can slow it down and play the possession game.”
Two challenges the Heat consistently faced in the regular season that coaches and players feel like helped strengthen them:
▪ The Heat ended this regular season with the second-most missed games in the NBA (289) due to injury, according to Spotrac.
▪ The Heat played in a lot of close games this regular season, finishing with the second-most clutch games (one that has a margin of five points or fewer inside the final five minutes of the fourth quarter) in the NBA with 54. Miami also tied the single-season NBA record for the most wins by five points or less with 24 such victories in the regular season.
“It just shows the resilience and also what we’ve been through this whole season,” Adebayo said of the Heat’s playoff success so far. “We’ve been in how many clutch games? So, when we get in those moments and you look up and we got nine minutes left and you’re down 11 or 12, we still in our minds believe that we got a chance.”
Late in the Heat’s rocky regular season, Heat captain Udonis Haslem said: “This is not the way I wanted my last year to go.”
When asked to revisit that comment in the Madison Square Garden visiting team locker room following Sunday’s Game 1 win, Haslem said: “The thing is you want to win, but that comment wasn’t about wins and losses. That comment is about just being able to get the most out of our guys and playing up to our potential. Understanding that you’re not going to win every game, but you still want to play to your potential. So for me, I just want us to play up to our potential. Win or loss, I want us to play at our potential.”
Haslem will retire at the end of the season, his 20th in the NBA. While Haslem’s final regular season didn’t go as planned, the playoffs are going better than most predicted after the Heat entered as an eighth seed.
“Just grinding. Playing a full 48 minutes and then some,” Haslem said of what the Heat is doing better this postseason. “That’s what we need. That’s what we struggled with a little bit during the season is putting together a complete game on both ends of the floor and we’re doing that now. We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs and it took us a little bit longer to build the habits that we wanted, but we got them.”
This story was originally published May 01, 2023 9:03 AM.
