Miami Heat: Ranking the Heat’s remaining games by difficulty
By Duncan Smith
The Miami Heat have four games left in the regular season, and their margin for error is now non-existent. We’ll take a look at their remaining schedule.
A long season has led us to this point. The Miami Heat sit alone in the nine seed of the Eastern Conference, a half game behind the eighth-place Orlando Magic but just one game behind the sixth-place Detroit Pistons.
The Heat are currently the odd man out, the fourth team in a battle for three spots with the Magic, Pistons and Brooklyn Nets. They have four games left to play (as do the Pistons), with the Nets and Magic having just three in order to create some space in the rankings.
There are nearly countless tiebreaker permutations based on how these four teams finish out, to say nothing of the disaster that unfolds if the Charlotte Hornets continue their late charge back into the pack (they’re in 10th, two games behind the Heat).
So we can address the tiebreakers later if and when their scenarios become more clear, but for now we’ll look at the task at hand for the Miami Heat.
The Heat face the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Toronto Raptors, the Philadelphia 76ers, and then wrap the regular season up against the Brooklyn Nets, a game that is certain to make or break at least one of these two teams’ playoff aspirations.
With no further ado we’ll rank these remaining games in order of difficulty from easiest to hardest as the Miami Heat look to close the 2018-19 regular season strong.