This felt like a Miami Heat season looking for a way to end, to be over, to be put out of its misery like a crippled racehorse humanely put down. Wednesday night in Chicago was as good a time and place as any.
But the Heat said no. Not yet. Miami’s season may still not have long to live, but it had Wednesday. And Heat fans had to be watching and wondering, mostly in frustration,“Where have you been?” Where has this team been?
The desperate Heat kept its season alive with a 109-90 must-win play-in triumph that saw domination from the start against a Bulls side that had been 3-0 vs. Miami during the season.
It wasn’t as close as the final. Heat led start to finish, and by as many as 25. Tyler Herro, befitting his surname, scored 38 points in a performance that underlined his elevation this season to all-star caliber. Miami’s defense was superb, good as I’ve seen it all year.
Now he Heat advance to face another must-win play-in Friday in Atlanta for the No. 8 seed and the playoffs proper. Might actually be a chance, too, because you never know when mercurial young Hawks stars Trae Young will let his temper and immaturity carry him away and ruin a game.
Win that one, too, of course, and the No. 1-seed Cleveland Cavaliers and the best record in the NBA Eastern Conference would await to very likely only elongate the end for this Heat season and end it ugly.
Do not expect a play-in to the Finals miracle run like Miami pulled off two years ago.
Still, the season had Wednesday night. And after this season of tumult, one hijacked by the Jimmy Butler drama, suspensions and trade, you had to feel the Heat deserved this night’s feeling, at least.
“Season hasn’t gone the way we wanted, but we’re super resilient,” Herro said afterward. “A bunch of guys put their hard hats on and go to work. We came out in attack mode. Now one more to go just to get into the playoffs. Job’s not done.”
Miami entered this game after a 37-45 regular season; the Heat had not had a worse one 2007-08. This hardly seemed a team, that had earned a spot in the postseason, albeit the play-in round.
It has been one of the most chaotic, disappointing seasons in the franchise’s 37 years, something surely not erased by Wednesday night. When this season ends, whether Friday night or soon after, there will be a ceremonial burying of it and then the moving on to whatever is next.
This was the first season that saw open fan criticism of coach Erik Spoelstra. Did the Heat underachieve?
Doubts only increased about whether club president Pat Riley, now 80, has one last hurrah and one last whale in his epic career.
Herro has blossomed, and Bam Adebayo honed a 3-point game, and Andrew Wiggins, here in the Butler trade, has been pretty good. But is that a Big 3 able to end a franchise championship drought dating to 2013? It is not.
There is much work to be done this offseason.
But Wednesday put that off a but longer.
Wednesday allowed the Heat to enjoy a moment of the feelgood that has been absent most of this season — certainly since the Butler mess, and the 12-21 record and 10-game losing streak that followed.
The hard reality still awaits.
The Heat fell hard this season. Interest plummeted as local TV ratings for games fell 52 percent. A once-celebrated club tumbled off the national radar. Big improvement this offseason is needed.
None of that has changed; Wednesday’s big show just put it off a bit, that’s all.
It still felt nourishing for a team that badly needed that.
This story was originally published April 16, 2025 at 10:33 PM.
