With 15 or fewer games remaining in the regular season for almost every NBA team, one thing is all but certain — at least two teams with a losing record in the regular season will play a first-round playoff series. The four Play-In Tournament teams in the Eastern Conference are all but set: the 32-36 Atlanta Hawks, 32-37 Orlando Magic, 29-38 Miami Heat, and 28-39 Chicago Bulls will all play at least one postseason game, and two of them will play an entire first-round series.
It’s hard to see anyone but Atlanta and Orlando, frankly; the Bulls have no intention of winning and are simply worse at tanking than the five teams below them, and Miami has the league’s second-worst record and seventh-worst net rating over its last 10 games. That’s unlikely to improve tonight, even against a slumping New York Knicks outfit that will be without Jalen Brunson for at least two more weeks.
The Knicks are 7.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook (-305 on the Moneyline) and the point total is set to 209.5. Meanwhile, the Heat are +245 on the Moneyline.
Kel’el Ware 10+ Points (+100)
The 15th overall pick had an inconsistent role for his first few months with the team, but as of late, he has become a more reliable piece of the rotation and has started all but one game since January 21. Since his first start, Ware has averaged 10.1 points, 9.4 rebounds, and 2.0 combined steals/blocks per game, proving a valuable asset for a Miami team going through a tumultuous campaign. Ware’s role decreased slightly as the Heat decided to go small against the five-out Boston Celtics on Friday, but he bounced back with a 19-point, 11-rebound performance the following night in Memphis. Despite having arguably the greatest-shooting big man ever in Karl-Anthony Towns, New York attempts the fourth-fewest threes per game, so Ware should be able to take on a more traditional rim-running role. This season, some 65.4% of his shots have come within 10 feet of the basket.
Within that range, the Knicks have struggled mightily, especially as of late. New York had an awful stretch between the start of February and the All-Star break where it posted the league’s third-worst defensive rating, and although it has improved somewhat since the intermission to the league’s ninth-best, it is still giving up the 15th-most points in the paint. Individually, Towns’ interior defense has been a major weakness that the Knicks’ opponents will game-plan around in the postseason; of 22 starting centers who have appeared in at least 45 games, Towns is the single least effective deterrent within 10 feet. Opponents shoot 2.3 percentage points better than usual when guarded by Towns within that range.
Josh Hart to Record a Double-Double (+105)
Hart has had a few uncharacteristic off-nights and drawn the ire of some of New York’s Twitter fan pages. On March 4, he recorded just two points, eight rebounds, and three assists while shooting one-for-eight from the field against the Golden State Warriors as the Knicks lost by 12. More agonizingly, he was held scoreless for the first time all season on Saturday night, going zero-for-seven from the field and grabbing seven boards and dishing out seven assists in a three-point loss to Golden State in which Jimmy Butler hit a 35-foot buzzer-beating bank shot in the first quarter that proved to be the difference.
But those two losses to the Warriors — who have had the league’s second-best defense, second-best net rating, and a 14-2 record since Butler joined the team — shouldn’t define Hart as a player. In the four games in between the two defeats to Golden State, Hart had three double-doubles and averaged 15.3 points, 11.8 rebounds, and 5.0 assists per game across that span, including a career-high 20 rebounds in a loss to the LA Clippers. By win shares and Value Over Replacement Player, Hart has been a top-20 player in basketball this season, and he’ll prove why tonight against a Miami defense that has been about league-average since the trade deadline. He’s also recorded six or more assists in three of the four games since Brunson’s injury.
Mikal Bridges U0.5 Steals (+120)
When the Knicks dealt Bojan Bogdanovic, five first-round picks, and a swap to the Brooklyn Nets for Bridges’ services, the goal was that they would get a three-and-D wing who was capable of elite on-ball defense, like he was in 2021-22 when he finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting. But he’s shooting just 35.0% from beyond the arc — his second-worst mark of his career — and has a defensive box plus-minus of negative-1.1, the 35th-worst among 184 qualifying players and below notably poor defenders like Towns, Damian Lillard, and Kyrie Irving. His 1.2% steal percentage is his lowest of his career, as is his average of 0.9 steals per game. He’s gone steal-less in three of his last four games, as well as five of his last seven.
Plus, despite all of their offensive struggles in the last 10 games, the Heat have been pretty decent at protecting the ball, allowing the 14th-fewest steals per game across that span. Wiggins has struggled with turnovers since joining the team, but it’s been a small sample size, and with the Warriors, he had been averaging the lowest turnover rate of his career. Among Miami’s other contributors, Bam Adebayo is recording his lowest turnover rate, Tyler Herro’s is his second-lowest, and even Duncan Robinson, who’s having one of his worst seasons as a ball-handler, has coughed it up two or fewer times in each of the past six games.
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