Erik Spoelstra made the concession in advance of his team’s eight-day All-Star break.
“Everybody is aware,” he said of the standings and the Eastern Conference playoff race that resumes Friday for the Miami Heat.
“We earned the right to at least be in the discussion right now.”
And they are, after a 13-game winning streak left his team as winner of 14 of 16 going into the break. As the Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics, Washington Wizards, Toronto Raptors and Atlanta Hawks have distanced themselves at the top of the East standings, the next seven teams remain bunched within six games of the No. 6 seed, with the top eight teams advancing to the postseason.
And yet the metrics remain daunting for the Heat at 25-32.
According to ESPN’s Basketball Power Index, the Heat have only a 19.3-percent chance of advancing to the postseason, compared to the 74-percent chance of the Detroit Pistons, 72.5-percent chance of the Chicago Bulls and 67.5-percent chance of the Indiana Pacers to round out those final three playoff berths. The Heat had been up to a 29.7-percent chance according to ESPN before the recent losses to the Philadelphia 76ers and Orlando Magic.
“There’s no easy way with this basketball team,” Spoelstra said.
Playoffstatus.com also paints a sobering picture, utilizing its schedule-strength computation to place the Heat with a one-percent chance for the No. 5 seed, 4% for No. 6, 8% for No. 7, 13% for No. 8... and a 74-percent chance of missing the playoffs.
So if you go by logic, the Heat will not make the playoffs. But what exactly has been logical about a season that saw the Heat fall to 11-30 at midseason and then emerge as the league’s hottest team since?
When it comes to the remaining schedule, the Heat have 11 games against teams above.500 and 14 against teams below. But those 11 feature three against the Cavaliers and two apiece against the Raptors and Wizards.
According to Playoffstatus.com, the Heat face the third-most-difficult remaining schedule of the seven teams vying for the final three playoff berths in the East, easier than only the Pacers and Milwaukee Bucks, but tougher than the Bulls, New York Knicks, Charlotte Hornets and Pistons.
What Spoelstra said the Heat have in their favor is an urgency that has defined their past month.
“When you win,” he said, “you can start to get soft in the mind.”
Instead, the Heat are expected to be stronger in body, with guard Josh Richardson likely to return in Friday’s resumption of the schedule against the Atlanta Hawks at Philips Arena.
Though it is possible the East playoff race could be further expanded, it appears the 76ers again are looking more toward the future, with their protective approaches with the injuries of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, while the Magic also appear to be taking a future-thinking approach, with the recent trade of Serge Ibaka.
During All-Star weekend, Cavaliers forward LeBron James warned not to sleep on the East.
“My assessment of the East is the East is playing great ball,” he said. “I mean, excluding us and you got Boston, you’ve got Washington, who has hit a hot streak and they’ve been playing great ball, not only at home but on the road. Boston has been consistent all year. You’ve got Atlanta who has been playing really good ball. You’ve got some other teams that are like – Miami who hit a hot streak, too, and they’re trying to make a push into the playoffs.”
Now the question is which teams step forward over these final two months of the regular season, perhaps attempting to emulate the Heat’s recent success.
“The way the East has been,” Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek said, “Miami wins 12 or 13 in a row, so our thoughts are, ‘Why can’t we suddenly roll off seven or eight in a row?’ You win seven or eight in a row all of a sudden you climb that ladder pretty fast in the East.”


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