Miami Heat among those fighting ‘B2B’ monster across first 20 games

The Miami Heat haven’t gotten off to the most ideal start in their 2022-23 NBA season, but they have seemingly begun to try and right the ship. Winning their last two contests, back-to-back games against two teams that beat them recently as well, those wins, sort of, wipe the board clean on those two defeats.

Moving forward though, they’ll have to continue to play the brand of ball that saw them able to avenge those losses, the second of which they got done without Jimmy Butler in the lineup. Fighting against themselves, from a figuring out how they have to play perspective, and the opposition, the Miami Heat are also one of the teams fighting the NBA schedule makers early on.

To be specific, the Miami Heat are one of 11 teams that have to endure four or more back-to-back sets of games across the first 20 games of the season. That’s just over a third of the league that will see themselves play on consecutive nights four or more times in just their first 20 contests of the year.

The Miami Heat got out to a really rough start, but are showing signs of correction. However, the schedule makers didn’t do them any favors there either.

The list is as follows: Brooklyn Nets (5), Chicago Bulls (4), Detroit Pistons (6), Indiana Pacers (4), Miami Heat (4), Philadelphia 76ers (4), Dallas Mavericks (4), Golden State Warriors (4), LA Clippers (4), San Antonio (4), Utah (5).

Though they don’t have the most across the first 20 games, an honor that belongs to the Detroit Pistons with six of them, the four that they do have were enough. Though the fact that they are dealing with more of them early means that they’ll have a chance to be fresher later, you need to get off to a good start for “later” to even matter.

And if you’re “fresh” for a non-playoff run, does it really matter? Not at all.

With that, the Miami Heat will have to continue to fight, though they won’t have their next consecutive set of games until the end of November at this point. But that one will be quite the haymaker in its own right.

They’ll travel to Cleveland to take on the surging Cavaliers who are 6-1 right now, before then heading to Minnesota to take on the Timberwolves, currently 4-4. It’s hard but it’s fair and if there is a team that will only use it all to get better, it’s certainly the Miami Heat.

And you sure hope that’s the case.