By Carlos Yap
THE Miami Heat beat the Milwaukee Bucks on the road to book a ticket to the second round.
Until this year’s playoffs, there have only been five 8th seeds that have beaten the 1st seed in the first round of the playoffs. Being the 1st seed in your conference usually brings championship aspirations, so bowing out in the first round is nothing short of a disappointing way to end your season.
The Bucks looked like a contender for the entire season, and many believed that the only reason they weren’t able to go further in the playoffs last season was because their second-best player, Khris Middleton, was injured in the playoffs. They continued this success into the regular season and became even stronger when they added a fully healthy Middleton back into the rotation, cruising to a 58-24 record this season. This landed them the second-best Vegas odds in their conference, only trailing the Boston Celtics.
This is the complete opposite season the Miami Heat had. The Heat was considered the title favorite after their conference finals run the previous season, and some even considered them to be favorites before the season began. But this all came to its head when the season started. Many believed that Kyle Lowry was a shell of his former self, Jimmy Butler can’t lead a team of this caliber deep into the playoffs, and that Duncan Robinson could never recapture his shooting stroke that led to his $90-million dollar contract back in 2021. As the season went on many people were writing off the Heat as a pretender rather than a contender and these doubts grew deeper when they lost to the 8th-seeded Atlanta Hawks in the play-in game. This sat them with the 7th-best odds Vegas odds.
But we know how this story plays out. The Heat beat the Bucks in five games to become the first play-in team to make it out of the first round in the current playoff era.
But how did this happen?
Was the Heat really an 8th seed?
One reason why the Heat beat the Bucks was that while the regular season would say so, most people would believe that the Heat weren’t a real 8th seed in terms of talent. During the 2021-2022 NBA playoffs, the Heat were one shot away from returning to the NBA Finals. Analysts believed they could build on this success into the following season, but other issues in the regular season led to the Heat having a respectable 44-28 record. Most years in the East, this would net you a top 5 seed in the conference, but this year where the East is the most competitive it’s been in years, this landed them the 7th seed for the play-in.
During the regular season, the Heat dealt with many injuries which led to many of their best players missing significant time. Tyler Herro missed 15 games whether it be minor injuries or rest, Jimmy Butler missed 18 games, and Kyle Lowry missed 27 games. While they played the majority of the season, they were only 3 games behind the 5th-seeded Knicks which makes you wonder what would the standings have been if these three players played a few more games.
Giannis injury
Another reason why the Heat were able to win was the injury to Giannis Antetokounmpo. While not trying to take anything away from the Heat, one can’t look at the outcome of this series without thinking an injury to the opposing team’s best player was a factor in their win. Injuries are a part of the sport, and some people might think that if Giannis plays in games 2 & 3, we might be talking about a different outcome for this series.
Once Giannis returned to action in Game 4, he seemed to have returned to the Giannis seen before the Bucks' title run in 2021. He seemed to settle more for mid-range jumpers instead of driving to the basket and dunking on people.
What some people don’t realize is that “back contusions” are major injuries, and it is a wonder that he was able to return to the series altogether. Back injuries tend to be ones that don’t go away very easily, so having a hobbled superstar in the middle of the playoffs can hinder a teams chance to win.
Jimmy Butler
Jimmy Butler’s Heat playoff career has been phenomenal to say the least. Twitter has called him “Playoff Jimmy” or “Himmy Butler” to show admiration for what a performer Butler can be during the postseason. Media scoffed at Butler joining the Heat during the 2020 season but quickly p[proved the doubters wrong by carrying them to the NBA finals in his first season with the team. Time and time Jimmy Butler has been doubted by the media and he hasn’t done anything but deliver time and time again.
Many would look at the 2021 playoffs as a time when Butler shrunk under the playoff lights, but this was the season where there was the shortest downtime between the NBA finals and the start of the NBA season. This lack of time to rest could have been a big reason why Butler was not able to perform as he usually did and can be seen as an outlier rather than what he can bring during the playoffs.
During this series, Butler averaged PPG 37.6 at 60% and 3PT 44%, upping his averages by over 15 points, and at least 10% in efficiency. He also became the first Heat player to score 40+ points in back-to-back games. These are ludicrous numbers by standards, considering he was being guarded by who Kevin Durant has said is the most underrated defender in the NBA Jrue Holiday.
Every Heat player caught fire
During this series, the white-hot shooting was not exclusive to Jimmy Butler, but it spread to every player on the Heat Roster as a whole. The Heat were a full unit where every player who stepped on the court took a big step up in their scoring. The Heat shot 10.6% better from the three-point line during this series than in the regular season and jumped from 4th lowest to leading the league.
The Heat bench currently leads the league in bench points per game bench player minutes per game. The Heat’s bench outscored the Buck’s bench by over 15 points each game except the first, where Bobby Portis played starter-type minutes because Giannis left the game 11 minutes due to injury.
A specific player to look at that got hot at the right time is Duncan Robinson. During the last two seasons, Robinson has been in and out of the team’s rotation and has been struggling to find his groove ever since he signed his deal back in 2021. But during this series, he found his shooting touch and shot a whopping 70% from three on 4 attempts during this five-game stretch.
Coaching
For many years now, most fans, especially Buck’s fans, many have been expecting coach Budenholzer to be let go. He has constantly made head-scratching decisions that have left most people puzzled. He avoids playing his star players for the entire game, even when necessary, and has drawn some sideline plays which can lead the fans to look puzzled.
As the biggest elephant in the room, the final minutes of both regulation and overtime have to be talked about. During the final seconds of both periods the Bucks’ were left with timeouts that they could have surely used rather than save them for a period that would never come. With 0.5 seconds remaining and a tied game, the Bucks chose to inbound the ball from their basket rather than advance the ball to half-court and draw a play for them to have a higher percentage of winning the game. While during overtime, they chose to not use their remaining two timeouts in the final seconds of the series, even though all they had was a broken play which ended up in Grayson Allen not even being able to get up a shot in the final moments of the game.
Coach Budenholzer tends to not make adjustments during series even if absolutely necessary. During this series, the Bucks played drop coverage versus the Heat’s pick-and-roll style offense, which led to many open shots even though the Heat were shooting a league-best 3-point percentage this series.
During this series, Jrue Holiday was the primary defender for Jimmy Butler, and this stayed true even after his back-to-back 40pt performances. This made many people question his rationale for keeping the former 2x Defensive Player of the Year away from guarding the
opposing team’s best player, with Giannis saying “It’s the coach’s decision and he should respect it” when asked why he wasn’t guarding Jimmy Butler.
While there has been much focus on the coaching deficiency of coach Budenholzer, there is also a lot to be said about the great coaching of Erik Spoelstra. This series is another reason as to why he was voted to be in the top 15 coaches of all time by his peers.
While the Bucks’ chose to play the Heat in drop coverage, they chose to exploit this system over and over which lead to them shooting their threes at such a high percentage.
Spoelstra chose to repeatedly initiate the offense with Bam Adebayo at the top of the key, leading Brook Lopez, a front-runner for Defensive Player of the Year this year, to be out of the paint, leading to easy baskets underneath the rim.
These are just a few examples of coach Spoelstra repeatedly putting his players in the correct spots for them to succeed in this series.
In a nutshell
The Heat‘s victory over the Bucks shows the importance of adjustments in the playoffs and that every possession counts. The Heat was able to win because of their grit and grind Heat culture shows that no matter how stacked the odds are against you, you can win. But how far can this determination take them? We’ll see in the next round as they face the New York Knicks in the 2nd Round.
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