Here come the Miami Heat. Two years after making the greatest run by a Play-In Tournament team so far, making the NBA Finals as the eighth seed, Miami looked dominant on both sides of the ball on Wednesday night in a 109-90 win over the Chicago Bulls in the first game it needed to win to keep its playoff hopes alive. Tyler Herro continued his star turn with a 38-point performance and Andrew Wiggins demonstrated why he was the centerpiece of the Jimmy Butler deal.
If the Heat want to earn a playoff series against the 64-18 Cleveland Cavaliers, they’ll have to win tonight against the Atlanta Hawks, who were blown out, 120-95, against the Orlando Magic in the 7-8 game on Tuesday night. In that game, Trae Young got ejected after receiving two technical fouls, exemplifying the Hawks’ frustration with Orlando’s swarming defense. But tonight is a new game.
Miami is a one-point favorite (-115 Moneyline) at DraftKings Sportsbook, with the point total set for 219.5. Meanwhile, Atlanta is -105 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down everything you need to know about tonight’s all-important clash.
Heat at Hawks preview, prediction
After five years of Butler carrying the torch for the Heat, Miami has had to find a new identity this season. It refused to sign Butler to a contract extension during the offseason, and after an extremely messy saga and divorce that hung over the franchise for the first half of the season, ultimately sent Butler to the Golden State Warriors for Wiggins. That deal, thus far, has proven better for the Warriors than for the Heat, as Golden State has posted the league’s third-best net rating since Butler’s debut and Miami its 15th-worst. Wiggins has played only 17 games and shot worse from deep than he did as a Warrior.
In Wednesday’s win, though, everything clicked. Miami recorded more points, assists, rebounds, steals, and blocks than Chicago, holding Bulls shooting guard Coby White — who had been on a tear over the last month of the regular season — to just 17 points on five-for-20 shooting. Reserve shooting guard Davion Mitchell — who had been acquired from the Toronto Raptors as a corollary to the Butler deal — scored 15 points on perfect shooting from the field and held White to five points on two-for-six shooting with three turnovers in the six minutes in which he guarded him. Mitchell will likely draw the primary Young assignment tonight.
The Hawks’ season has also seen plenty of ups and downs. Through the end of January, Young had been struggling through one of the most inefficient seasons of his career as he adapted to a new, less ball-dominant role alongside ascendant star Jalen Johnson. But Johnson underwent shoulder surgery to repair a torn labrum and was ruled out for the season on January 23, and since then, Young has averaged 25.7 points and 11.5 assists per game and improved his efficiency inside the arc. Johnson’s injury also helped unlock first overall pick Zaccharie Risacher’s potential; from January 25 onwards, he averaged 14.8 points per game and shot 51.1% from the field and 41.8% from deep, pairing his six-foot-eight frame with impressive off-ball instincts and a reliable jump shot.
Atlanta’s performance against the Magic in the 7-8 matchup on Tuesday was — to put it mildly — uninspiring. Young’s 28 points were relatively inefficient, as he shot just eight-for-21 from the field and one-for-five from three, posting a negative-22 plus-minus, the second-worst figure on the team. Risacher shot just two-for-10 from the field, and Dyson Daniels — who posted the most steals since Gary Payton in 1999 — was held without a steal for just the fourth time all season, although he did grab 12 rebounds and dish out seven assists. Orlando went five-for-10 for 12 points when guarded by Young, five-for-eight for 14 points when guarded by Risacher, and even 12-for-21 for 28 points when guarded by Daniels. All three of those players will need to be better tonight if the Hawks want to pull off the upset.
Heat at Hawks pick, best bet
Top-end talent tends to win in the playoffs, and if I were to rank all the players in the game from best to worst, I’d probably list Young first, but the next two are definitely Herro and Bam Adebayo. Daniels and Wiggins, in some order, round out the top five. If Johnson were still healthy, Atlanta’s top-end talent would be better than this Heat unit’s, but as currently constructed Miami is more talented, more experienced, and better on defense. The Heat also finished the season in hotter form than the Hawks, posting a plus-12.1 net rating over their last 10 games of the season to Atlanta’s plus-3.4, although Miami’s figure was boosted by a 49-point win over the New Orleans Pelicans in the penultimate game of the season.
Erik Spoelstra’s strategy tonight will undoubtedly be to slow down Young and dare anybody else to make him pay, and I’m not sure if the Hawks have the talent to do so. Miami tends to funnel its opponents into taking a disproportionally high number of threes. Daniels, for all of his strengths on defense, is a league-average three-point shooter, Onyeka Okongwu predominantly shoots from the corners and usually only when he’s wide-open, Mouhamed Gueye is a huge negative on offense, and despite his accuracy over the second half of the season, rookies like Risacher typically take a while to become useful postseason assets.
The Heat are well-equipped to adopt that strategy. In five matchups against Young between his stints in Toronto and Miami, Mitchell guarded Young for more than 27 minutes of game time, the third-most of any player. On those 154.7 partial possessions, he held Young to 31 points, 17 assists, and nine turnovers, shooting 12-for-28 from the field and three-for-10 from deep. He’s also shot a combined seven-for-24 when guarded by either Haywood Highsmith or Wiggins, in a combined sample size of more than 22 minutes. Overall, in four games against the Heat this season, Young averaged just 17.0 points and 12.3 assists per game, shooting 35.0% from the field and 26.5% from deep.
Defensively, I’d imagine Quin Snyder will put Daniels on Herro. But in 26 total minutes during the regular season, Herro dropped 23 points on 10-for-18 shooting from the field and two-for-five accuracy from deep, although Daniels did force him into a one-to-one assist-to-turnover ratio. Then there’s the matter of Wiggins and Adebayo: Wiggins shot five-for-10 for 14 points in 14 minutes when guarded by Risacher, his likely matchup tonight, and five-for-11 in 12 minutes against Risacher’s backup, Terance Mann. Adebayo was also effective in 100 partial possessions against Okongwu, scoring 23 points on 10-for-20 shooting and holding Atlanta’s big to three-for-10 from the field. Miami sneaks into the bracket before falling to the Cavaliers in five.
