While this Miami Heat season has still largely felt like pulling teeth, they are quietly playing some of their best basketball of the season.
Winners of four-straight, seven of their last nine and eight of their last 11, Miami is now six games above .500 (35-29) for the first time since Dec. 4, including a pair of strong wins against the red-hot Charlotte Hornets and Houston Rockets mixed with wins over tanking teams, such as New Orleans, Washington and Brooklyn (twice).
There were some poor losses in there — looking at you Utah and Milwaukee.
But the Miami Heat are playing some objectively good basketball, sporting the league’s third-best NET Rating since the start of February and the fifth-best since the All-Star break. Last year at this time, it was the exact opposite.
As a result, Miami is squarely positioned for not just a top-6 — but something greater.
Heat are currently in a dog fight for the No. 5 seed in the East:
Two weeks ago, it looked all but certain Miami would be competing in their fourth-straight play-in tournament.
At the end of the day, there’s still games that must be played. And a lot can change fairly quickly.
There’s a possibility that Miami still finishes in the play-in. But in lieu of their recent win streak plus Philadelphia’s nine-point loss to the Atlanta Hawks Saturday, Miami is currently tied with the Orlando Magic for the No. 6 seed in the East.
Orlando, who’s currently 4-0 against Miami (with one more game left), owns the head-to-head tiebreaker. Though both teams are currently one game back of the Toronto Raptors, who have recently sputtered over a gruesome stretch with losses to Oklahoma City, San Antonio, New York and Minnesota.
That’s quite unforgiving.
Miami is two back of Toronto and one back of the Magic in the loss column. In comparison, the Heat have the hardest of the three teams’ remaining schedules, per Tankathon. Miami has the 12th-hardest, while the Magic have the 16th-hardest with Toronto having the 10th-easiest.
The Heat’s lone remaining matchup against their intrastate foe will be on March 14, with two additional games in Toronto on April 7-9, their 79th and 80th games.
It’s not uncommon that Erik Spoelstra’s teams play their best post-All-Star break. Last year’s 12-18 mark over their final 30 games was an exception. Who could forget Miami’s 30-11 stretch in 2016-17, or their 21-9 stretch to close the season in 2021-22. The Heat finished the regular season strongly in 2023-24 and in three of their four seasons during the Big 3 era.
Who’s to say that won’t happen again?! Well, ultimately they will. Every season is it’s own story, and it will be up to the Heat to write their own, good or bad, where a top-5 seed is not out of the realm of possibility, at least for this sliver of time.
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The Heat will need to play very good basketball the rest of the season to avoid the play-in round. 11-7 may be good enough. That would give them 46 wins for the season. Every game is important. Their journey starts today. No excuses. No regrets.