The Miami Heat were knicked up in their first-round series against the Indiana Pacers, specifically Jimmy Butler. Time should be their side now though.
The Miami Heat are moving on to the second round of the NBA playoffs. After a few days off and with the fact that we have seen Miami Heat basketball for what seems like every other day for a while now, this layoff has seemed like a massive one, relatively.
While some of it was due to good circumstances, the Miami Heat earning and producing a quick four-game sweep over their first-round opponents in Indiana, while some of it was due to the most awful circumstances.
As we have all been living and breathing over the last few days, we have surely all heard the devastating news about Kenosha, Wisconsin man, Jacob Blake. With that being the latest in a long line of incidents involving the senseless shooting and even further, murder, of black and brown men across America, NBA players decided to take a stand.
Something else that we all should be aware of by now, that stand came in the form of a strike by the players. The Milwaukee Bucks kicked things off, appropriately, by not coming out in their scheduled playoff contest on Wednesday against Orlando.
The rest of the scheduled teams that evening followed. None of the games that were scheduled on Wednesday were played, none on Thursday, and none on Friday either.
With the players voting to continue and finish the season though on Thursday, they would obviously need to be rescheduled. On Friday, we received that information.
The NBA has announced its schedule for this weekend. Bucks-Magic will be the first game played at 3:30pm Saturday, followed by Thunder-Rockets and Lakers-Blazers. Sunday: Celtics-Raptors at 1pm, followed by Clippers-Mavericks and Jazz-Nuggets at 8:30pm.
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) August 28, 2020
With that, we can now begin to hypothesize again about when the Miami Heat might actually start playing basketball again. With the Bucks and the Magic slated to play on Saturday, that means that the earliest that the Miami Heat could potentially play would be Monday, the 31st of August.
That date could continue to be pushed back much further, to as far as the 4th of September, which is the Friday after the earliest Monday based on the schedule they’ve been using thus far. Either way you go, Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat will have had at least a week of rest and recuperation, with the possibility for as much as almost two weeks if the Orlando and Milwaukee series is an extended one.
That’s why, with Jimmy’s shoulder injury and the general freshness of the Miami Heat in mind, time is on their side right now.