One season after finding themselves a single win from the NBA Finals, the Miami Heat were battling for their playoff lives Friday night at home against the Chicago Bulls.
Miami finished the regular season with a disappointing 44-38 record, ending as the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference. It then lost the first NBA Play-In Game at home against the Atlanta Hawks Tuesday evening.
The Heat went on an 11-1 late in Friday’s outing against the Bulls with Max Strus doing most of the damage. That included a playoff-clinching three-pointer with 1:14 left in the fourth quarter.
Strus finished Friday night’s game with 31 points on 7-of-12 shooting from three-point range. He was on one throughout.
Despite starting out slowly, Jimmy Butler went for 31 points on 11-of-24 shooting. Meanwhile, Bam Adebayo overcame struggles from the field (1-of-9 shooting) to play elite level on defense with 17 rebounds.
For the Miami Heat, the 102-91 win leads to a 12th appearnace in the NBA Playoffs over the past 15 seasons.
Miami Heat face uphill climb against the Milwaukee Bucks
Anyone taking on NBA MVP finalist Giannis Antetokounmpo is going to face an uphill climb. For Miami, that’s magnified with no one really capable of guarding one of the game’s most dominant players.
This past regular season saw the Greek Freak average 19.5 points, 17.5 rebounds and 7.5 assists in two games against the Miami Heat. While Erik Spoelstra and Co. did split the regular-season series with Milwaukee, both of its wins came within a three-day span back in January with both Giannis and Khris Middleton sidelined.
In the two games that Antetokounmpo played against the Heat, Miami lost by a combined 37 points.
This is the crux of the issue for the Heat. With these two teams going up against one another for the third time in the NBA Playoffs since the Orlando bubble, they are headed in opposite directions.
Milwaukee finished the regular season with an NBA-best 58 wins. It disposed of opponents on a near never-ending loop, finishing eighth in scoring at just under 117 points per game. Miami? Well, it finished dead last in the NBA in scoring (109.5 points per game).
Miami simply can’t rely on Max Strus to repeat the performance we saw Friday night against an average Bulls team. The Heat also pretty much go only eight deep.
That was magnified with Kevin Love, Caleb Martin and Kyle Lowry as the only three bench players to see action against Chicago. When healthy, the Bucks can go 11 deep.
While Miami might have a bit of an advantage Game 1 given that it has played twice since Milwaukee closed the regular season, a seven-game series is not going to be friendly to the Heat.