Miami Heat: Games with playoff implications for Heat fans to watch this week
By Duncan Smith
Miami Heat outlook
Compared to the march of death the Pistons and Magic are about to begin this week, the Heat have a positively straightforward schedule, or so it seems at a glance.
The Miami Heat will face the Orlando Magic Tuesday, as previously mentioned, and they’ll follow that up Thursday night at home against the mostly-tanking Dallas Mavericks and wrap the week up Saturday on the road against an entirely-tanking New York Knicks squad.
Most likely the Heat figure to win at least two of these games, but going 1-2 could be a disaster especially if one of those losses comes at the hands of the Magic.
Without the advantage of tiebreakers the Heat will need to beat the Magic in order to be able to fully claim that they control their own destiny. If the Magic beat the Heat, the Heat would essentially be forced to have to overtake the Magic in the standings as finishing the season with the same record would doom them to miss the playoffs.
Sweeping this week against the Magic, Mavericks and Knicks could all but lock the Miami Heat into the eighth seed if not give them the opportunity to move up and overtake the Pistons for the seventh seed.