The Miami Heat lead the Eastern Conference, outright, for the first time this season. With the Chicago Bulls managing to set the pace for the most of the young season thus far, the Miami Heat set themselves back a bit by losing their second contest of the season, a defeat to the Pacers in Indiana and without the services of Kyle Lowry.
It’s alright though now, as they’ve climbed back to the top and again though early in the season, their ability to jump right back on a streak to get there after a hiccup is encouraging.
Ringing off five straight victories since the Pacers loss to get to 6-1, the task now is seeing if they can continue to occupy the number one slot in the Eastern Conference.
It’s a long season and though expecting them to be there all year is completely unrealistic, especially at or from this point, it’s worth considering how long they can stay there at the moment.
When thinking about the fact they have less losses than anyone else in the conference, continuing to win would keep them there.
For conversational purposes, how many of the Miami Heat’s next games can they win before they have the threat of losing one? Well and in a very talented league like the NBA, any team can lose on any night, however, the Heat also just aren’t any team.
They, too, still can lose though, but they shouldn’t and won’t let their guard down as easily as some others might. Looking directly to their next contest, a matchup against the Boston Celtics in Miami and with all due respect (perhaps?), the Miami Heat should and will win that contest.
With them being a better team, for one and the drama going on in Boston right now, they shouldn’t be hard to topple.
The Miami Heat’s road immediately gets tougher though, welcoming in the Utah Jazz, before heading out west to face the Nuggets, the Lakers, the Clippers, the Jazz again at their place, and a cherry on top by facing Oklahoma City in OKC before being able to come back home for a November 17th contest against the Pelicans.
The Miami Heat certainly have a tall task ahead of them to win out, but let’s say they go 5-2, at worst (while they could go 6-1), that puts them at 11-3. You could do the same exercise for the two and three teams in the conference right now, the Bulls and the 76ers.
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.