Heat reaches make-or-break week in push to avoid play-in tournament. A look at what’s at stake

The Heat will have to pick up wins against quality opponents, as five of its final eight regular-season games come against teams currently with winning records. In fact, the Heat’s next four games come against winning teams that are also jockeying for postseason positioning amid tight playoff races in both conferences. “We’re excited for this stretch,” Heat forward Duncan Robinson said, with just two weeks left in the regular season. “We’re going to embrace it.” This challenging four-game stretch against good teams battling for postseason seeding begins Tuesday with a matchup against the New York Knicks at Kaseya Center (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun). The Knicks, led by All-Star guard Jalen Brunson, are in fourth place in the East standings and just a half game behind the third-place Cleveland Cavaliers. Then it continues with a matchup against the Philadelphia 76ers in Miami on Thursday before hitting the road to take on the Houston Rockets on Friday and Indiana Pacers on Sunday. The eighth-place 76ers and sixth-place Pacers are the two teams that the seventh-place Heat is sandwiched between in the East standings, and the Rockets have made a late-season push to put themselves in contention to be one of the Western Conference’s four play-in tournament teams after a shaky 25-34 start to the season. “It will be the best to simulate how the playoffs are going to be,” Heat guard Terry Rozier said. “This is a great four-game stretch, but we got to take it one game at a time. The Knicks we play next, we got to worry about that one and get that one at home and protect home court.”

The problem is those four teams hold winning records, and the Heat is an underwhelming 17-24 this season against teams currently with a winning record. The Heat has built its record by taking care of business against inferior opponents, improving to 24-9 this season against teams currently with a losing record after Sunday night’s 119-107 road victory against the struggling Washington Wizards. The Heat also demolished a bad and short-handed Portland Trail Blazers team by 60 points in Miami on Friday. “Obviously, it’s tough to win in this league,” Rozier said following Sunday’s win over the Wizards when asked about the step up in competition this week. “Every game is not going to be easy like we showed tonight. But we feel like we can make our push and we will make our push.”

The Heat needs to make its push now because time is running out, as it sits in seventh place in the East standings and in danger of needing to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tourney for the second straight season. That’s what makes Thursday’s matchup against the 76ers and Sunday’s game against the Pacers especially important. The Heat, 76ers and Pacers are the three teams battling for the coveted No. 6 seed in the East to avoid the play-in tourney, which features the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference. The Heat (41-33) entered Monday 1.5 games ahead of the eighth-place Philadelphia 76ers (40-35) and just a half game behind the sixth-place Pacers (42-33)

Along with helping determine the East’s No. 6 seed, the Heat’s upcoming matchups with the 76ers and Pacers will also help determine the tiebreakers between the Heat and those teams. ▪ The Heat will clinch the head-to-head tiebreaker against the 76ers with a win over Philadelphia on Thursday. But a loss would even the four-game regular-season series between the two teams at 2-2, and the tiebreaker would then likely come down to conference record. ▪ The Heat will clinch the head-to-head tiebreaker against the Pacers with a win over Indiana on Sunday. But a loss would give the Pacers the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Heat, with the three-game regular-season series between the two teams currently tied at 1-1.

▪ A three-way tie among the Heat, Pacers and 76ers would likely be determined by cumulative head-to-head record. “Both teams got something to lose, at the end of the day,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. “So there’s going to be a little more edge. We’re not going to walk in there and just get wins, we got to earn them.” As of now, the math isn’t in the Heat’s favor. According to Basketball Reference’s playoff probabilities report, the Heat entered Monday with a 39.1 percent chance of finishing with a top-six seed in the East to make the playoffs without needing to take part in the play-in tournament. That model has the Heat with no chance to close as the No. 1 or No. 2 seeds, 0.7 percent for a No. 3 finish, 3.5 percent for No. 4, 11.9 percent for No. 5 and 22.9 percent for No. 6

Basketball Reference’s modeling has the Heat’s most likely finish listed at 40.6 percent for seventh place in the East (and a spot in the play-in tournament). But the Heat can flip the math in its favor with wins in the coming days. That’s how critical this week is. “We love competition, we have a bunch of competitors in our locker room,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “They love the feeling of how important all these games are and that’s the elation of when you get wins, but there’s also the other side of it. The consequences when you lose. When you really care about something, you have both realities.”

The reality is this week represents one of the Heat’s final opportunities to avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament. “We’re going for it,” Spoelstra said. “That’s who we are. If we see opportunity in front of us, that’s what we’re going for. These playoff races and positioning, they’re competitive for all the teams. Both conferences, I think there’s a lot to be sorted out before we get to the end of the season and it’s only eight games.”