After digging themselves out of a hole by winning seven out of their last nine games, the Miami Heat had a golden opportunity to overtake the Chicago Bulls and control their own fate when it came to avoiding the 10th seed.
In what was the biggest game of the season, the Miami Heat laid an egg and lost to the Bulls, 119-111, Wednesday night at the United Center.
The Heat must now lay in the bed they made.
In a game of this magnitude, the Heat needed to play hard-nosed defense from start to finish and limit the Bulls from getting into their run-and-gun offense. Instead, Heat Nation witnessed the Josh Giddey show. He continuously hunted for matchups and terrorized Miami until the final buzzer.
It seemed after every Heat miss that the ball would end up in Giddey's hands, and with one pass downcourt, the Bulls either had a wide-open three or a walk-in-the-park layup or dunk. Giddey finished with a monster triple-double, putting up 28 points, 16 rebounds and 11 assists.
With the Bulls now sweeping the season series 3-0, the only way Miami can have a home play-in game is if the Atlanta Hawks and Chicago Bulls collapse to end the season and the Heat win out, which seems improbable when you glance at their schedule.
The Heat have put themselves in the hardest-possible position to make the playoffs, and they only have themselves to blame.
I get that injuries have occurred and that the Jimmy Butler fiasco threw a wrench into the season, but the fact of the matter is the Heat have a long list of games they had no business losing that now have them facing a challenging path to the postseason.
In most seasons, I would have faith in the Heat winning a do-or-die game given how battle tested most of these players on the roster are. But this is the last team to trust doing that given their inconsistencies and having a large sample size showing an inability to close games.
In multiple press conferences, coach Erik Spoelstra stated that the Heat have to do things "the hard way" to accomplish their goals.
Now would be a good time for Spoelstra to rehash that message, as the Heat will more than likely have to do something no team has done since the play-in was installed—win two road games to clinch a postseason berth.