Miami Heat: Should they welcome a first-round matchup with the Brooklyn Nets?
Should the Miami Heat welcome a first-round playoff matchup against the Brooklyn Nets?
As the 2020–21 NBA regular season continues to wind down, over the next couple of weeks teams destined for the postseason are going to get a greater understanding of who they will likely face in the first round of the playoffs.
The playoff picture in both conferences is beginning to clear up and matchups are beginning to outline themselves.
One team that has garnered interest throughout this season has been the defending Eastern Conference champion Miami Heat. Even though this team hasn’t looked like the version of themselves that made it through the East and to the NBA Finals less than a year ago, there are still many that believe in this team as a potential darkhorse contender in the East (even more so if they can get a healthy Victor Oladipo back).
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And with just a couple of weeks remaining in the regular season, it looks like if the Heat is going to make another deep run in the postseason it’s going to have to come as an underdog in the first round of the playoffs.
With roughly 13 games remaining in the season, it’s looking more and more as if the Heat will head into the postseason as the seventh or eighth seed in the East. That means that the Heat could be looking at a first-round matchup against the Brooklyn Nets or Philadelphia 76ers, who sit atop the conference.
Specifically, the Heat are more likely to enter the playoffs as the seventh seed than the eighth seed, unless this team completely falls apart over the last few weeks of the regular season. That means that there’s a very good chance that we could see a Heat-Nets first-round playoff series in the East.
Question is, should the Heat be open to such a series, or should Miami be willing to do what they can to avoid this matchup?
Would the Miami Heat have a shot against the Nets in the playoffs?
And before you scream at me in the comments, this is not a dumb question to ask. For one, if there’s one thing we know about Miami, it’s that, when healthy, they want all the smoke – to quote Kendrick Perkins.
This Heat team will not back down from fierce competition. We saw it time and time in the playoffs in the restart bubble last season and have seen it in spurts throughout the regular season this year.
A Jimmy Butler-led team is going to give any team a battle. Even this injury-riddled Heat team took the defending NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers to six games in the NBA Finals last year. And you can bet that, if healthy, the Heat would embrace a series against the paper champion Nets.
Many have already crowned the Nets as the 2021 NBA champions and you can bet that Butler and Bam Adebayo would love the opportunity to spoil everyone’s expectations – just as they did last season with the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
In fact, there’s a case to be made that Butler embraces being an underdog more than being the favorite. It’s how he’s gotten to the NBA and how he’s played his entire career – with a chip on his shoulder.
But even aside from that, let’s not forget that there’s a possibility that the Nets won’t be fully healthy at the start of the postseason. James Harden suffered a setback in his recovery from a hamstring injury and there’s a chance he might not be ready for round one of the playoffs.
There’s an argument to be made that if you’re going to have to play the Nets in the playoffs, you probably want to see them earlier than later. Even more so if there’s a chance that this team won’t be fully healthy at the start. That said, Brooklyn has played this way all season and it hasn’t impacted their success.
Logical thinking says that the Heat shouldn’t want to play the Nets in the first round of the playoffs. Although, this team might have crazy enough confidence that they’ll embrace the matchup – especially if they see some weaknesses in the juggernaut that is the Nets.
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Miami hasn’t looked themselves at all this season. However, as crazy as it sounds, I think we might see the best version of the Heat in a potential first-round series against the Nets. And I’m here for it. So might be the Heat.