You Can’t Disregard Top Seed All Year, But Mock Miami Heat’s Circumstances

The Miami Heat have Game 2 of their Eastern Conference Finals battle set for Thursday night.

On the heels of their comeback victory over the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night in Game 1 of the ECF, the Miami Heat would best serve themselves to come out with more of the mentality that they showed in the second half of Game 1, as opposed to how they started it.

Speaking of “best serving” one’s self or a group, the Miami Heat carried that mentality with them all throughout the regular season. While most other teams around the East acted as if it didn’t matter, though they, simply, just couldn’t snatch it away from the Heat’s grasp, the Miami Heat proceeded to go for the top seed in the Eastern Conference and got it.

Even while teams like the Milwaukee Bucks postered and positioned themselves to be able to travel the potential path that they wanted to throughout the playoffs, the Miami Heat stuck to their guns. Well, it all began to shake out in the very first series.

With the Atlanta Hawks losing Clint Capela for some of the series and not having a fully healthy John Collins, that was the nature of an NBA season, while in any sport, injury happens.

The Miami Heat will play whoever is out there in front of them, that’s for certain. However, it’s not their fault they took their seeding seriously and others didn’t.

However, if you don’t put yourself in a position to have to play an extra game, such as one of the play-in games that Capela hurt himself in, then maybe you don’t have that injury.

Even if you look at their next series, similar things could ring true. Who is to say that Joel Embiid encounters the same issue if the situations were different?

Perhaps not having to be in those circumstances save his orbital fracture from happening, who knows? Then, when you look at the Boston Celtics, they have a Marcus Smart and Al Horford excuse for Game 1, while Derrick White won’t be playing in Game 2, though it’s reportedly due to the birth of his child.

However, the one thing remains the same, the paths were the paths. You never know when an injury will happen.

You never know when COVID will happen. Again though, the paths were the paths.

The Miami Heat are also missing one of their key pieces, their starting point guard. But this is the most important thing.

They played all year long for the number one seed to give themselves the potential path of least resistance. Though you can’t, for certain, say one way or another, you can perhaps say that maybe some of these things don’t go this way for other teams had they approached it the way the Miami Heat did.

At the end of the day, you can’t knock the number one seed in the conference all year long and what it means, but then try and mock the Miami Heat for their circumstances, who they have to play, or who they don’t have to play along the way either.

If other teams would have took things as seriously as Miami did, this would have been their path. But—they didn’t.