Miami Heat guard Davion Mitchell (45) reacts with center Bam Adebayo (13) after the Heat defeated the Atlanta Hawks in overtime at State Farm Arena. Dale Zanine Dale Zanine-Imagn Images
CLEVELAND
The Miami Heat has become used to dealing with challenging things this season. From going through the Jimmy Butler drama that led to the trade of Butler, to a league-leading amount of blown double-digit and fourth-quarter leads, to enduring a long 10-game skid in March, the Heat has been through a lot.
“We’ve been through as much as a team probably can go through,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, “and I really commend the team for finding a way to embrace the adversity.”
Embrace the adversity and grow from it to conquer more challenges.
The Heat punched its ticket to the playoffs with a 123-114 overtime win over the Atlanta Hawks on Friday night at State Farm Arena, becoming the first 10th-place team in either conference to make the playoffs from the play-in tournament since this current play-in format was first instituted for the 2020-21 season. Miami enters the playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s No. 8 seed.
What makes qualifying for the playoffs through the play-in tournament as the 10th-place team so hard is it requires two consecutive road wins. The Heat did it, defeating the Bulls in Chicago on Wednesday and the Hawks in Atlanta on Friday.
The Heat held on in overtime against the Hawks behind 30 points from Tyler Herro and nine overtime points from Davion Mitchell despite blowing a 17-point lead and finding itself trailing by six points with 5:06 left in the fourth quarter.
The Heat now continues its trip, flying to Cleveland after Friday’s win to begin preparing for a first-round playoff series against the top-seeded Cavaliers. Game 1 is Sunday at Rocket Arena (7 p.m., TNT and FanDuel Sports Network Sun).
“We have an incredible appreciation and I’m so grateful that we’re in the playoffs,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat advancing through the play-in tournament for the third straight season and making the playoffs for the sixth straight season to match the franchise’s longest such playoff streak. “We’re the first team to do it, why not, to take down two road games to be able to get an invitation into this tournament.”
The Heat made the playoffs despite finishing the regular season eight games under the .500 mark, becoming just the fifth NBA team since 1998 to qualify for the playoffs with a winning percentage of .451 or worse. The other four teams that did it (2021-22 New Orleans Pelicans, 2010-11 Indiana Pacers, 2007-08 Atlanta Hawks and 2003-04 Boston Celtics) all were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.
“We did it the hard way,” Heat forward Haywood Highsmith said. “We fought through a lot of things this season. It’s prepared us for these types of moments. We’re the first 10th seed to make the playoffs with two road victories. So we’re battle-tested. We can go anywhere and beat anybody.”
The Heat’s next challenge may be its toughest yet, facing the loaded Cavaliers. Cleveland has been elite, finishing the regular season with the NBA’s second-best record at 64-18 behind only the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The Cavaliers also closed the regular season as one of only four teams in the league with both a top-10 offensive rating and top-10 defensive rating, along with the Thunder, Celtics and Minnesota Timberwolves. The Cavaliers posted the NBA’s top offensive rating and eighth-best defensive rating.
“You have to respect what Cleveland has done all year long,” Spoelstra said. “They’ve played probably the most consistent level, them and OKC, all season long. It’s not by accident. They’re well coached. They have great players, they have really good continuity. They play the right way.”
The Heat has struggled against quality teams, closing the regular season just 12-30 against teams with a .500 record or better.
“It’s going to be a challenge, for sure. They’ve won almost 65, 70 games this year,” Herro said of the Cavaliers. “They have a great offense, but we’re ready for the challenge.”
Depth is a strength for the Cavaliers, with six players averaging double-digit points this regular season — Donovan Mitchell (24 points per game), Darius Garland (20.6 points per game), Evan Mobley (18.5 points per game), De’Andre Hunter (14.3 points per game), Jarrett Allen (13.5 points per game) and Ty Jerome (12.5 points per game).
Three-point shooting is also a strength for the Cavaliers, finishing the regular season with the NBA’s second-best team three-point shooting percentage at 38.3 percent while taking the fourth-most threes in the league at 41.5 per game.
The Heat lost its three-game regular-season series against the Cavaliers this season, 2-1. The Heat’s only win came when it still had Butler.
“Cleveland has been No. 1 in the East all year,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said of the well-rested Cavaliers, which have not played a game since finishing the regular season on Sunday. “They’ve been having a historical season. So for us, it’s understanding what’s at stake for them. For us, it’s figure out how to get one in Cleveland and worry about everything else later.”
Despite playing some of its best basketball in recent weeks to win eight of its final 12 regular-season games and two straight road play-in games to clinch a playoff spot, the Heat enters the first-round series as a heavy underdog. In fact, the Heat opened as a 12-point betting underdog to the Cavaliers for Sunday’s Game 1 in Cleveland.
After all, only six No. 8 seeds have eliminated 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. But the Heat was the last team to do it, eliminating the then-top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the 2023 playoffs on the way to becoming just the second No. 8 seed in league history to advance to the NBA Finals.
“Everybody knows when you get to this point, anything can happen,” Adebayo said. “We can just start shooting the ball great and obviously we’ve done it before. For us, it’s understanding we got four to seven more games and we’ll see what happens after that.”
For one night, though, Spoelstra wanted his team to soak in the moment and not look too far ahead. It’s a moment that was earned.
“Tonight, I just want our guys to enjoy this,” Spoelstra said after the playoff-clinching victory. “We’ve been through a lot. We’ve been through a lot this year and our guys really wanted this. Then I want them to take a moment and reflect on how far we’ve come in the last three months. We’ll get to Cleveland. I think it’s better that we just get on and play on Sunday instead of having more time to overanalyze and overdo things as we tend to do.”
