The Miami Heat should shift to a soft tanking blue print for the remainder of the season and hope for some luck at the NBA Draft Lottery
The Miami Heat may only be 1.5 games back of the 8th seed in the Eastern Conference playoff picture, but losing to the Phoenix Suns on Monday night should’ve been the final straw for this team.
Miami is 26-33, and doesn’t look like a playoff team at the moment. Goran Dragic made a return from his injury, but hasn’t looked comfortable yet. Justise Winslow is also banged up and has missed the last two games for the club.
Perhaps somewhat surprising, Hassan Whiteside has been pretty much the only bright spot over the last few games. But that’s not enough, not even if a bad Eastern Conference. And it’s not going to get any easier, looking at the team’s the Heat have to face in the coming days.
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The Heat play the Warriors, Rockets and Nets in the coming week and it will likely get a bit uglier before they even have a shot to make things any better. Question is, will the team waive the white flag and begin to soft tank?
Perhaps shutting down a few players that are a bit banged up would be the first sign of that. Playing the likes of Bam Adebayo and other young guys extended minutes would be the second pivot.
With the hope being that they fall down the standings far enough where they’d have a real chance to get lucky at the NBA Draft Lottery.
Right now, the Heat have the 10th worst record in the NBA. Should they fall to the 6th worst record, which they are only 3.5 games back of, they’d have a 37 percent chance at landing a top 4 pick and nine percent chance at the No. 1 overall pick.
That’s the spot that the Heat need to attempt to fall into, and hope for some luck. The season is over. Even if the Heat make the playoffs, this team can’t make any noise. They’d be lucky to win one game.
It’s time for the Heat to soft tank and hope for some luck on lottery night.