54 Miami Heat Wins Should Be Target Number To Seal One Seed
Miami Heat: 54 Wins Should Be Target Number To Seal One Seed
If you look at the number two and three teams in the conference, the teams you think can actually catch the Heat in the race, they would be the Milwaukee Bucks and the Philadelphia 76ers.
Boston is only one game behind Philly at number four, however, they are four games back and have a tough 12 games to close the year, featuring Memphis, Utah, Minnesota, Milwaukee, Chicago, and the Miami Heat themselves.
When you look at Milwaukee(44-26) though, the initial read based on their remaining schedule is that they should be able to go 9-3 across their final 12 games, at best and 7-5, at the worst.
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Facing Minnesota, Chicago twice, Memphis, Philly, Brooklyn, and those Celtics in that span—it won’t be easy.
As far as Philly(42-26) goes, they could go 11-3, at the very best, while they could also fall to 9-5 as well. They face a schedule that includes a potent Dallas team, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and the Miami Heat again too.
They have a less daunting challenge than Milwaukee, but they also are a bit behind them in the standings. If you look at the peak projections for each of the top two challenger’s final stretch of games, the Bucks could go 53-29 as the year closes based on maximizing the remainder of their schedule.
If you do the same for the Philadelphia 76ers, they could go as high as 53-29 themselves. Of course, there are always the conditional semantics of any situation to account for.