One season after finding themselves a single win from the NBA Finals, the Miami Heat were battling for their playoff lives on Friday night at home against the Chicago Bulls.
Miami finished the regular season with a disappointing 44-38 record, closing the campaign as the Eastern Conference's seventh seed. The team then lost their first game in the play-In tournament, falling at home against the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday evening.
During Friday's clutch win, Miami went on an 11-1 run late in the fourth quarter, largely courtesy of Max Strus, who nailed what was essentially a playoff-clinching three-pointer with 1:14 remaining in regulation.
Strus finished Friday night’s game with 31 points, including 7-of-12 shooting from three-point range. He was on one throughout the contest.
Despite starting out slowly, Jimmy Butler came on for 31 points of his, hitting on 11-of-24 shooting. Bam Adebayo also overcame struggles from the field (1-of-9 shooting) to play elite-level defense while grabbing 17 rebounds.
For the Miami Heat, the 102-91 win lead to a 12th playoff appearance over the past 15 seasons.
The mountain now grows much, much more difficult to climb as the Heat enter into a first-round series against the NBA-best Milwaukee Bucks. Anyone taking on NBA MVP finalist Giannis Antetokounmpo is going to need a lot of breaks to go their way. For Miami, the uphill adventure is magnified all the more so simply by the fact that they do not roster a player who can truly defend Antetokounmpo.
This past regular season saw the Greek Freak average 19.5 points, 17.5 rebounds and 7.5 assists in two games against the Miami Heat. While head coach Erik Spoelstra and co. did split the regular-season series with Milwaukee, both of its wins came within a three-day span in January -- and that was with both Giannis and Khris Middleton sidelined.
In the two games that Antetokounmpo played against Miami, Spoelstra's crew lost by a combined 37 points.
The crux of the issue is that while these two teams are going up against one another in the playoffs for the third time since the Orlando bubble, they are headed in opposite directions as franchises.
Milwaukee finished the regular season with an NBA-best 58 wins. It disposed of opponents on a near never-ending loop, finishing eighth in scoring at just under 117 points per-game. Miami, by contrast, finished dead last in the NBA in scoring with 109.5 points per-game.
It is unrealistic for Miami to rely on Max Strus to repeat his performance from Friday -- one which came against an average Bulls squad -- and the Heat lack any real depth.
That lack of depth was magnified versus Chicago, with Kevin Love, Caleb Martin and Kyle Lowry the only three bench players to see action. When healthy, the Bucks can go 11 deep.
While Miami might have a bit of an advantage Game 1 given that it has played twice since Milwaukee closed the regular season, hanging for the whole of a seven-game series seems like a bridge too far.
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