lost for the night early in the second period with a back injury<\/a>, after a hard fall.<\/p>\nUltimately, fighting the good fight was not enough, with the Heat failing to make the playoffs for the first time in seven seasons.<\/p>\n
In a gritty, testy, physical game offering shades of the Heat\u2019s Pat Riley era, the Heat got 27 points from Andrew Wiggins, 28 from Davion Mitchell, 23 from Tyler Herro and a 12-point, 19-rebound double-double from center Kel\u2019el Ware.<\/p>\n
With a win, the Heat would have advanced to a Friday winner-take-all game against the loser of Wednesday night\u2019s Nos. 7-8 play-in game between the Orlando Magic and Philadelphia 76ers.<\/p>\n
Instead, off to the great unknown of an offseason that seemingly will beg for change after a second consecutive 10th-place finish in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
Five Degrees of Heat from Tuesday night\u2019s play-in game:<\/p>\n
1. Game flow: The Hornets went up eight early and led 26-24 after the first period.<\/p>\n
Then, playing on without Adebayo for all but 1:02 of the second period, the Heat moved to a 54-52 halftime lead, with the Hornets\u2019 Brandon Miller along the way forced to the bench with his third foul.<\/p>\n
From there, the Heat moved to a five-point lead midway through the third quarter, their largest to that stage, only to see a 10-0 Hornets surge turn it into a five-point lead of their own. The third ended with the Hornets\u2019 Coby White beating the buzzer for an 89-83 Charlotte lead entering the fourth.<\/p>\n
But back came the Heat, pushing their lead to seven midway through the fourth quarter behind the scoring of Mitchell.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, it was tied 102-102 with 4:27 to play in the fourth on a dunk by the Hornets\u2019 Miles Bridges, only to see Wiggins respond for the Heat with a 3-pointer. Another Wiggins 3-pointer then had the Heat up 108-102 with 3:30 left in regulation.<\/p>\n
Not done, the Hornets made it 111-108 with 1:17 to play in regulation on a Brandon Miller 3-pointer and later moved within 112-111 with 18.6 seconds to play on another Miller 3-pointer.<\/p>\n
From there, Herro went to the line with 12.9 seconds to play in regulation, making both free throws for a 114-111 Heat lead, only to see White tie it on a 3-pointer with 10.8 seconds to play in regulation.<\/p>\n
Herro was off on a 3-point attempt to end regulation.<\/p>\n
2. Overtime: A Bridges 3-pointer put the Hornets up three early in overtime, with Charlotte later moving to another three-point lead with 2:17 to play on a Miller inside basket.<\/p>\n
Off a Herro miss, the Hornets got a driving reverse layup from Miles Bridges for a 123-118 lead with 1:33 to play.<\/p>\n
The Heat trimmed the deficit to 123-120 to play on a driving basket by Mitchell, only to see LaMelo Ball score on the other end to make it 125-120 with 26 seconds to play.<\/p>\n
But back came Herro with a 3-pointer with 23.5 seconds to play to make it a two-point game.<\/p>\n
A steal by the Heat\u2019s Pelle Larsson followed, as did a three-shot Hornets foul against Herro, who made all three free throws for a 126-125 Heat lead with 8.7 seconds to play.<\/p>\n
From there, the Hornets called their final timeout, withLaMelo driving from the winning basket.<\/p>\n
3. The big lineup: The big lineup with Ware starting the final two regular-season games proved to be more than a tease, with Spoelstra again going with the alignment of Ware, Adebayo, Wiggins, Mitchell and Tyler Herro.<\/p>\n
The only previous game those five started, was Sunday night\u2019s season finale against the Atlanta Hawks, as the Heat\u2019s 27th and final lineup of the regular season.<\/p>\n
Then, with Adebayo out, Jaime Jaquez Jr. opened the third period with the other starters.<\/p>\n
4. Hard fall: Adebayo took his hard fall when tripped by the hand of Ball while saving the ball from going out of bounds beneath the Heat basket with the Heat down 28-26.<\/p>\n
Ball then scored 5-on-4 in transition, before the Heat called time with 10:58 left in the second period.<\/p>\n
The entire Heat bench went out to check on their center, who then was helped off the court and into the locker room alongside Heat physician Harlan Selesnick.<\/p>\n
Adebayo at that stage was 3 of 3 from the field with three rebounds in his 11 minutes.<\/p>\n
The Heat minutes later termed it a lower-back injury, with Adebayo questionable to return,<\/p>\n
5. So more Ware: To his credit, Ware played big as needed, securing his double-double with his 10th rebound with 7:03 to play in the third period.<\/p>\n
That rebound came three seconds after Ware caught a Miller attempt for a blocked shot, and seconds before another Ware blocked shot.<\/p>\n
If the Heat wanted a postseason showcase for the second-year big man, they at least got that.<\/p>\n
In addition, Ware continued to display a feathery 3-point stroke, with a pair in the first half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE \u2014 The play-in magic is gone. And so are the Miami Heat. After navigating the treacherous play-in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[114,123,125,2490,124,2295,110],"class_list":["post-232166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-latest-headlines","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-heat","tag-miami-news","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}