But they lost to the Hawks in the play-in!

Miami, who almost didn't make the playoffs, is a win away from the NBA Finals.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Let’s briefly review the Miami Heat’s 2023 postseason to date.

LOSS vs. Hawks, trailing by as many as 24 points
WIN vs. Bulls, despite trailing with 3:47 remaining in fourth

WIN at Bucks by 13
LOSS at Bucks by 16
WIN vs. Bucks by 22
WIN vs. Bucks by 5
WIN at Bucks in OT

WIN at Knicks by 7
LOSS at Knicks by 6
WIN vs. Knicks by 19
WIN vs. Knicks by 8
LOSS at Knicks by 9
WIN vs. Knicks by 4

WIN at Celtics by 7
WIN at Celtics by 6
WIN vs. Celtics by 26

It was less than six weeks ago when the Hawks pummeled the Heat in the East 7-8 play-in game. Miami had struggled to the finish line of the regular season, unable to catch the Brooklyn Nets for a guaranteed playoff spot after the Nets traded Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving for a bunch of wings. The Nets went well below .500 after the trade deadline, but Miami wasn’t much better than .500 and simply couldn’t catch them. Still, given that the Heat had been the East No. 1 seed a year ago with a substantially similar roster, there was a little bit of that “you don’t really want the Heat in your bracket!” talk. And then Hawks beat them.

THE CHICAGO BULLS had a lead over the Heat late in the fourth quarter of the knock-out game of the play-in tournament. Miami was 3 minutes, 47 seconds from elimination from the 2023 NBA postseason. They survived with a stirring endgame performance (sound familiar?) and won the No. 8 seed.

And now, a little more than a month later, the Heat are poised to have lost as many games in best-of-7 series against the top two seeds in the conference as they did against THE HAWKS and THE BULLS in the play-in tournament.

The Heat appear poised to have lost more games to the KNICKS than to the Bucks and Celtics combined.

The Heat are 5-3 this postseason against the No. 7 Hawks, No. 9 Bulls and No. 5 Knicks. The Heat are 7-1 against the No. 1 Bucks and No. 2 Celtics.

None of this makes any sense.

Home teams who lose Game 1 almost always win Game 2. Heck, the Celtics did just that in the conference semifinals after James Harden and the Sixers stole the first game of the series in Boston. Friday’s Game 2 against the Heat felt like an obvious Boston win going in, maybe even a blow-out. Instead …

It became clear at that point, if it weren’t already clear from Game 1, that the Celtics were in real trouble against a team as resilient and talented as the Heat, a team that could defend well enough to disrupt Boston’s offensive plans and a team that could beat the excellent Celtics defense in idiosyncratic ways.