Recent Surge Has The Miami Heat Peaking Just In Time
The Miami Heat are sitting at six games above .500 for the first time all season and have been playing as good as any team in the league as of late.
Earlier in the month, a long home stretch that featured several lottery teams and some slumping contenders looked to be a major factor in the Heat's successful start to March.
Now, that March record reads 11-3 and Miami has won five in a row. Three of those wins have come against Charlotte, Milwaukee, and Toronto—the teams competing with Miami for playoff position in what's been a tight race all year.
It's time to give the Heat their due. Miami is actually a pretty good ball club.
With only eight games left on the schedule against teams that are all below .500, the Heat are primed to head into the playoffs rolling on all cylinders.
This is a team that could have 13 potential free agents this summer, a team that was supposed to be a bridge to a promising future with new All-Star talent on board for next season.
But what this team of free agents realize better than anything is that their success this year will translate into dollars next year. A solid showing in the postseason versus heading to the lottery could be the difference in millions for players like Jermaine O'Neal, Udonis Haslem, Quentin Richardson, and Carlos Arroyo.
That's why it isn't entirely surprising to see them all play so well recently. What is surprising is the effort to close out games, an area the Heat have struggled in all season long.
Against the Warriors, Lakers, Bobcats, Bucks, and Raptors, the Heat did what has avoided them most of the year. They turned up the defense and finished games the way good teams are supposed to.
That's exactly what you want to see, especially this time of year.
Right now Miami is 1.5 games behind Milwaukee for the fifth seed. If the season ended tomorrow they'd be playing the Boston Celtics in round one of the playoffs.
While a month ago that series seemed like an easy outing for Boston, that simply isn't the case anymore. The Heat can win that series, they know it and the Celtics know it.
Put record aside, what these teams did in November, December, January, etc...doesn't matter right now. The postseason is about where a team stands in the present. Right now the Heat are playing better basketball, plain and simple.
So as the regular season comes to a close and teams begin to prepare to clean out lockers or head to the playoffs, there really aren't too many clubs in a better position than Miami.
Should they manage to surpass Milwaukee and finish the year with the fifth seed, a whole new window would open.
That could mean playing the Atlanta Hawks in round one, a team Miami has beaten three times in a row by an average margin of 17 points. The Heat have the Hawks number; if they had to chose any first-round opponent, it would be Atlanta.
To dabble even further into the unknown, if the Heat beat the Hawks they'd likely face the Orlando Magic in round two. Miami has beaten Orlando at home and on the road; a 108-102 OT loss in the TD Waterhouse Centre on March 18 shows you how evenly these clubs match up.
In a year that promised little besides the development of young talent, the 2009-10 season is beginning to look like a different story. Miami cannot only make the postseason, but if they continue playing the way they've been, they can win.
Are the Heat a contender? That's probably pushing it a bit too far. But they deserve more credit than they've been getting, especially when you consider they have the potential to win-out the regular season.
Miami picked the right time to get hot. This season isn't about next season anymore, its about right now.
After all, if the Heat can do some damage in the postseason with a ragtag roster like this, it'll go a long way toward convincing Dwyane Wade where he should be for the next six years.
