Can No. 8 Seed Miami Heat Actually Win the 2023 NBA Championship?

Any time you're among the final four teams standing, you have, at least in theory, a chance to win the championship.

And Jimmy Butler's Miami Heat are among the final four teams standing.

This isn't your typical conference finalist, though. Even though Miami finished the regular season with the seventh-best record in the East, a loss in the play-in tournament made it the eighth seed.

Now they're the first No. 8 to make it to the conference finals since the New York Knicks pulled it off in 1999. That team also made the NBA Finals (losing to the San Antonio Spurs) and is the only No. 8 to make it that far.

That begs the question: Can the Heat go one step further than those Knicks?

The oddsmakers at FanDuel certainly don't seem to think so. Title odds suggest Miami is, by far, the biggest underdog.

• Boston Celtics: -105
• Denver Nuggets: +230
• Los Angeles Lakers: +360
• Miami Heat: +1500

FiveThirtyEight's projection system is pretty low on the Heat, too.

• Boston Celtics: 53 percent chance to win the Finals
• Denver Nuggets: 28 percent
• Los Angeles Lakers: nine percent
• Miami Heat: nine percent

But again, Miami is in the final four. And projection systems, betting odds and expert picks have failed in the past. In 2011, every ESPN expert picked the Lakers to beat the Dallas Mavericks in the second round. Two rounds later, 15 of 22 picked Miami to beat Dallas in the Finals. Dirk Nowitzki and the Mavs prevailed in both cases thanks to gritty defenders and a generational superstar.

The formula is similar for this year's Heat.

Miami was seventh in the league in regular-season defense. Dallas was eighth in 2010-11. Dirk averaged 27.7 points and had a 4.7 offensive box plus/minus. Butler is at 31.1 points with a 6.6 OBPM.

Against Boston, you can almost count on at least one win simply coming by virtue of the fact that Butler's playing.

Miami upset the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round, in large part because Butler simply willed it. He averaged 30.0 points in the first three games of that series and then ended Giannis Antetokounmpo's campaign with 56 in Game 4 and 42 in Game 5.

No one gave the Heat a chance heading into that series, but few players rise to the moment quite like Butler. Having already seen him outduel Giannis and then Jalen Brunson in the second round, it's not hard to imagine him willing his way to at least one win against the Celtics.

A Boston letdown in another game would suddenly make things interesting, and it's certainly been prone to those during this postseason. The Celtics dropped two games to the seventh-seeded Atlanta Hawks, and they were down 3-2 to the Philadelphia 76ers partly because they lost a Game 1 that Joel Embiid sat.

That aforementioned gritty supporting cast getting hot from three could push the Heat to three wins in this series. That's a big part of how they beat the Bucks. In the first round, Miami shot 45.0 percent from deep.

If all of that breaks right and the Heat manage to force a Game 7, all bets are off.

Last year, these two teams met in the same round, and Butler came within inches of a second trip to the Finals.

Of course, exacting revenge on Boston in this round doesn't secure Miami its ultimate goal. It would still have to beat the Nuggets or Lakers, and the challenges there might be even greater.

Bam Adebayo is an All-Star-caliber player, but he's 6'9". Either of Nikola Jokić or Anthony Davis would have a pretty significant size advantage. Adebayo's ability to create a bit from the perimeter could perhaps neutralize that to an extent, but the bigger key would almost certainly be those Miami shooters.

Duncan Robinson, Gabe Vincent and Max Strus are all averaging more than two threes per game in the playoffs. Butler, Kyle Lowry, Caleb Martin and Kevin Love are all between one and two. And if the Heat make it all the way to the Finals, there's a chance they could get Tyler Herro and his outside shot back, too.

From there, you're looking at a similar equation as the one detailed for Boston. Can Butler singlehandedly win you a game or two? Can the role players get you one? Can the defense generally be consistent enough, particularly against the high-powered attack of the Nuggets?

There are a lot of ifs, coulds and potentialities here. Most have to break in one direction for the Heat to have a chance. That's just sort of the path for an eighth seed that makes it this far.

But there is a path. And if there's any duo in the league that might be able to find it, it's Butler and Miami coach Erik Spoelstra.

The latter is arguably the game's best tactician. Regardless of what he's given to work with, he finds offensive and defensive schemes and rhythms that work.

Including Udonis Haslem, this version of the Heat has a whopping nine undrafted players on its roster. Nine. Two of the players who were drafted, Love and Lowry, are 34 and 37, respectively.

And Spoelstra has them eight wins away from a title.

Since he and Butler joined forces, they've made three conference finals in four seasons. And over the same stretch, Butler leads the NBA in playoff wins over replacement player.

Butler says "Playoff Jimmy" is "not a thing," but it's clear that this stage and his all-time great coach have a way of bringing more out of him.

Against any of the three other teams remaining, there's at least a chance that Butler could be the best player in the series.

And that can be enough.