The Miami Heat have been on a roll, and they are showing that they can be a contender in the eastern conference. Being the 14th seed is an uphill climb for the team and they will need to stay hot from now until the all-star break, and after the break as well.
Getting to the 8th seed in the eastern conference by the end of the regular season is not impossible, but they will need to keep playing well on both sides of the ball. Early in the season the losses were piling up and now battling their way back into playoff contention will be a hard task.
The 5-game winning streak that the Heat have been on is an indication that they are getting hot at the right time. In three of those games they were playing against western conference teams.
Two of those teams are western conference powerhouses being the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets. The Heat played these games at home and their home record is 9-13, which is better than their 7-17 record on the road this season.
Those two games were close, but the Heat would beat Houston by 6 points and Golden State by 3 points. Those wins were important for the team’s chemistry.
The last two games the Heat played were against the Warriors and the Brooklyn Nets. Both games had a similar out come because of the final play that included Heat guard Dion Waiters draining a game winning 3-point shot.
Those are the types of wins that the Heat need in order to keep their momentum going. In the Nets game the Heat had to battle back from a large deficit in order to win.
They did that by turning their offense into defense. They would box out on missed shots and hustle up the court to set up their half court offense, and also score fast break points.
In the Warriors game the Heat were keeping the game close and going into the fourth quarter the Heat had the lead. The Big 4 of the Warriors were scoring big numbers, but they could not put the Heat away because they were shooting better from 3 point range.
In the game the Heat would shoot 43.3% from three, while the Warriors would only shoot 26.7%. In this game something that rarely happens actually happened, and the Warriors died by the 3 ball. The Heat handed the Warriors their 7th loss of the season and rolled into their next game against the Nets.
The first quarter of the Nets game was good for the Heat they outscored the Nets by 4, but in the second and third quarter the game would go down hill for the Heat. At the start of the 4th quarter the Heat would be down by 18 points.
What seemed to be an insurmountable lead for the Heat was not. The Heat started to battle back by shooting the 3 ball well again.
They were also getting in the paint and drawing fouls on the Nets. The Nets started to get frustrated and stopped scoring and that opened the door for the Heat to win the game.