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Heat coach Erik Spoelstra says he\u2019s confident his team can find success in the Play-In once again.<\/p>\n
Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra described the Play-In game format with one word.<\/p>\n
\u201cHarrowing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Spoelstra, the longest tenured coach with the same team in the NBA, added: \u201cIt\u2019s like the NCAA (Tournament). It\u2019s like playing in the Olympics. The one-game eliminations, they\u2019re harrowing. There\u2019s nothing else. It\u2019s Game 7.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miami plays at the Charlotte Hornets on Tuesday (7:30 p.m. ET, Prime Video<\/a>) in an Eastern Conference game in the 2026 SoFi Play-In Tournament<\/a>. The winner will play the loser of the Philadelphia 76ers-Orlando Magic for the No. 8 seed and a first-round playoff series against the No. 1 seed Detroit Pistons.<\/p>\n If anything is true about the ultra-competitive Spoelstra, who has won two NBA championships and led the Heat to two other NBA Finals appearances, it is that he will embrace a harrowing Play-In scenario rather than miss the postseason.<\/p>\n \u201cWe say it every year that we\u2019ve been in there (Play-In game),\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be in there, but that\u2019s sometimes the path you have to take.\u201d<\/p>\n The Heat know that path as well as any team. They\u2019re making their fourth consecutive appearance in the Play-In format, and Spoelstra\u2019s Heat have found success: three playoff appearances as the No. 8 seed, including a trip to the NBA Finals in 2023<\/a>. That year, they beat the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round<\/a>, No. 5-seeded New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinals<\/a> and the No. 2-seeded Boston Celtics in the East Finals before<\/a> losing to the Denver Nuggets in the NBA Finals<\/a>.<\/p>\n Spoelstra doesn\u2019t have concrete reasons for Miami\u2019s Play-In game triumphs. The Heat are one of three teams (the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers are the others) to win a playoff series after starting the postseason in the Play-In.<\/p>\n \u201cYou just try to maximize that opportunity,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cYou want to be in the playoffs. You want to punch your ticket, and it doesn\u2019t always happen in the way that you want it to happen. The top four or five teams in the league, the top seeds, they kind of understand where they\u2019re going to be three months before the end of the regular season.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody else is jostling and probably not in the exact position they want to be, and that includes the teams that have to go through the Play-In to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n It helps that the Heat have had Spoelstra on the bench and experienced players \u2014 like current Heat players Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro \u2014 on the court. In previous seasons, they had, in addition to Adebayo and Herro, Jimmy Butler, Kyle Lowry, Kevin Love, Duncan Robinson and Andrew Wiggins.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to accept the reality of the situation and deal with it,\u201d Heat guard Jaime Jaquez Jr. said.<\/p>\n Just a month ago, the Heat were tied for fifth place with the Magic with a 38-29 record and had won seven consecutive games. They were one game ahead of Toronto and 2 1\/2 games ahead of the Philadelphia 76ers and Atlanta Hawks.<\/p>\n Miami then lost 10 of its next 13 games \u2013 two of those defeats by a combined five points \u2013 and concluded the regular season with two victories.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the league,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to deal with a lot of different emotions. And if you go through a stretch where you lose 10 of 13, I don\u2019t want guys feeling excited and doing jumping jacks about where we are.<\/p>\n \u201cBut you do want to have intention. And after the frustration, anger, all of that as competitors, then the next day we just focus on solutions. \u2026 just getting focused for another challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n Following Friday\u2019s victory against the Washington Wizards, Spoelstra said, \u201cWe also do want to have mini victories in this season. It\u2019s been frustrating the last three weeks. But that\u2019s the second night of a back-to-back. You just want to take on the additional challenge of getting our 13th win in that scenario and also to secure that we would have a winning record. These aren\u2019t massive goals. You just try to wrap your mind around any kind of little goal you can achieve and ultimately get the win.\u201d<\/p>\n Miami took three of four against Charlotte this season \u2013 two victories early in the season and a split in March.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, we\u2019ve had too much experience in the Play-In, but (it\u2019s) just understanding what\u2019s at stake,\u201d Adebayo said. \u201cIt\u2019s really how bad do you really want to get into this dance. That\u2019s what it boils down to.\u201d<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Jeff Zillgitt has covered the NBA since 2008. You can email him at\u00a0jzillgitt@nba.com<\/a>, find\u00a0his archive here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0follow him on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heat coach Erik Spoelstra says he\u2019s confident his team can find success in the Play-In once again. Miami…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,228055,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-603050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-miami-heat-play-in-tournament","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}