By November 17th for Philadelphia and after a projected 3-4 record in the span (Wins over Detroit, Toronto, and Indiana with defeats to Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, and Utah), they might sit at 9-6. That doesn’t beat 11-3.
Running the same exercise for Chicago and with opponents of Philadelphia(W), Brooklyn, Dallas(W), Golden State, the Clippers(W), Lakers, and Portland(W) on the 17th of November, you can project a record of 4-3 for them across those games. That would give them a record of 10-5, good enough for second, perhaps, but not first.
Listen, nothing is solid here and these are just projections, but first and foremost, the Miami Heat have to handle their business by, at least, going 5-2 across their next seven games. The belief, strongly, is that they can and should though.
With these teams being the closest and the Miami Heat standing a great chance to handle their business on their road trip after a couple more home games, they should be able to hold on to conference supremacy for another week and a half or two, at the very least.
Again, not that they should, absolutely, be concerned with maintaining it at the moment, why not win as much as you can, though the regular season isn’t the priority. It’ll still be fun to see how long they can do it, plus it’ll sure make for quite the interesting online chatter.