Friday’s Heat-Hawks game carries big playoff implications. Here’s a rundown and injury update

Anthony Chiang
·7 min read

The Miami Heat has been searching for consistency since the start of the season: consistency on the offense, defense and in its rotation.

The Heat’s current three-game winning streak is hardly enough to proclaim that it has finally reached that goal in the middle of an up-and-down season. But with just 13 regular-season games remaining, Miami earned a 20-point road win against the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday night to string together consecutive double-digit victories for the first time this season following Monday’s 22-point win against the Houston Rockets.

The hope is that represents a step in the right direction in the Heat’s ongoing search for consistency.

“Hopefully we don’t get too comfortable,” coach Erik Spoelstra said after Miami’s 107-87 win in San Antonio. “That’s something that we’re working on, trying to find more consistency.”

Now would be a good time for the Heat to find it during a quick-but-important two-game trip, as it battles for playoff positioning and works to avoid this season’s play-in tournament.

Friday’s matchup between the Heat and Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun) carries a little extra weight in the East playoff race. Only 1.5 games separate the No. 4 and No. 7 playoff seeds with less than a month remaining in the regular season, and the Heat and Hawks are two of the teams in that tightly packed group.

The Heat (31-28) entered Friday in seventh place in the East — one game behind the No. 6 Boston Celtics and No. 5 Hawks, and 1.5 games behind the No. 4 New York Knicks. Miami is also 2.5 games ahead of the No. 8 Charlotte Hornets.

The short-handed Hawks will be without their top scorer in Friday’s important game. Star guard Trae Young has been ruled out after spraining his left ankle in Wednesday’s overtime loss to the Knicks.

Hawks starting center Clint Capela, who’s averaging 15.7 points and 14.7 rebounds this season, is questionable with a back contusion. Danilo Gallinari (right foot soreness) is also questionable and Tony Snell (right ankle sprain) is doubtful for Atlanta.

Along with Young, the Hawks have also ruled out De’Andre Hunter, Cam Reddish and Kris Dunn for Friday’s contest.

For the Heat, it will remain without guard Victor Oladipo against the Hawks because of right knee soreness. Guard Tyler Herro is listed as questionable with right foot soreness, which is an injury he has been dealing with in recent weeks.

The only other player on the Heat’s injury report for Friday’s game is two-way contract guard Gabe Vincent, who is probable with right knee soreness.

“We wanted to treat this trip like a business trip,” Herro said. “... We gotta go to Atlanta next and that’s a huge game for us. They’re [fifth] in the standings, so we just need to continue to try to stack up some Ws as we build up for the playoffs.”

Friday’s third and final matchup of the season against the Hawks is also critical because it will determine tiebreaker if Miami and Atlanta finish with the same record. The teams split two earlier games at AmericanAirlines Arena.

The Heat already holds the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Knicks after sweeping the season series 3-0.

But the head-to-head tiebreaker between the Heat and Celtics is also undetermined because the teams still face off twice — both games in Boston on May 9 and 11 — before the end of the regular season. Boston leads the season series 1-0, so the Heat needs to win both remaining games against the Celtics to claim the tiebreaker.

“We know we have 13 games left and we know we have to push,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. “So we’re trying to make that push and push ourselves up in the seedings.”

Stringing together wins to move up the East standings is important in order to avoid facing the conference’s top teams in the first round. But there’s also the added motivation to avoid the play-in tournament this season.

The seventh-seeded Heat would be part of the play-in tourney if the season ended Thursday (which it doesn’t) after representing the East in the NBA Finals last season.

How does the play-in tournament work?

It will take place after the regular season and before the first round of the playoffs, and it will include the teams with the seventh-highest through the tenth-highest winning percentages in each conference. As of Thursday, the East’s play-in tourney would include the No. 7 Heat, No. 8 Hornets, No. 9 Indiana Pacers and No. 10 Washington Wizards.

The teams with the seventh-highest and eighth-highest winning percentages in each conference will each have two opportunities to win one game to earn a playoff spot. The teams with the ninth-highest and tenth-highest winning percentages in each conference will each have to win two consecutive games to earn a playoff spot.

At the end of the regular season, the team with the seventh-highest winning percentage in each conference will host the team with the eighth-highest winning percentage in its conference in a play-in game. The winner of the No. 7 vs. No. 8 matchup will be the seventh seed in the playoffs for its conference.

The team with the ninth-highest winning percentage in each conference will host the team with the tenth-highest winning percentage in its conference in a play-in game. The loser of the No. 7 vs. No. 8 game will host the winner of the No. 9 vs. No. 10 game, and the winner of that game will be the eighth seed in the playoffs for its conference.

Those play-in games would be May 18-21, a short turnaround from the Heat’s regular-season finale on May 16 against the Pistons in Detroit. The playoffs begin May 22.

Even if the Heat comes out of the play-in tournament to grab one of the final two playoff seeds in the East, its reward would be a first-round matchup against likely either the Philadelphia 76ers or Brooklyn Nets.

“There’s going to be so many of these story lines in the next month,” Spoelstra said. “You just have to stay the course, focus on your team, focus on each game. You can’t get ahead of yourself. This is ultimately what you want as a professional. You want these games to have incredible context. ... I don’t think anybody in our grouping is going to be pulling away in the next month. It’s going to be a competitive grind.”

Six of Miami’s remaining 13 games come against teams currently with a winning record: Friday at Atlanta, May 4 vs. Dallas Mavericks, May 9 and 11 at Boston, May 13 vs. Philadelphia and May 15 at Milwaukee Bucks.

With the Heat entering Friday six games ahead of the 11th seed, it would take a collapse for Miami not to play beyond its May 16 regular season-finale. But whether the Heat moves straight into the first round of the playoffs or has to earn its way in through the play-in tourney is still very much in the air.

“I don’t pay attention to it,” Heat star Jimmy Butler said when asked if he keeps track of the standings. “I don’t be on the world wide web like that. So I can’t tell you who is where. I know in our team meeting we talk about it. But all we gotta do is get there. If we get there, us as a team, we’ll handle the rest.”

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