NEW ORLEANS — The reality of a regular season that soured months ago hit home Friday night for the Miami Heat: They’ No. 10.
Despite a 153-104 victory Friday night over the injury-ravaged New Orleans Pelicans at Smoothie King Center — the highest-scoring game in the franchise’s 37 seasons — the Heat were locked into the No. 10 and final Eastern Conference play-in seed when the Atlanta Hawks and Chicago Bulls, like the Heat, won their Friday night games over equally disinterested, lottery-bound opponents.
That means the path to a sixth-consecutive playoff berth is set for Erik Spoelstra’s team — all on the road, all without margin for error.
On Wednesday night, it will be the Heat against the No. 9 Bulls at the United Center for the right to stay alive in the play-in tournament. The Heat lost the season series 3-0 to the Bulls.
The winner of that game then will play next Friday at the loser of the Tuesday night play-in game between the No. 7 Orlando Magic and No. 8 Hawks for the right to enter the playoffs as the No. 8 East seed and face the No. 1 Cleveland Cavaliers in the best-of-seven first-round of the playoffs.
That means if there is to be postseason basketball at Kaseya Center it only will come with two Heat wins without a loss in the play-in round and then not until Game 3 of the opening round against Cleveland.
The Heat on Friday night were led by the 23 points and 12 rebounds of Bam Adebayo and the 22 points of Tyler Herro, with both pulled for good midway through the third quarter. The Heat also got 21 points from Duncan Robinson.
Out Friday night for the Pelicans were Zion Williamson, CJ McCollum, Dejounte Murray, Kelly Olynyk, Yves Missi, Bruce Brown, Herbert Jones, Trey Murphy III, Brandon Boston, Jordan Hawkins and Karlo Matkovic.
That had the Pelicans playing with the NBA minimum of eight in uniform.
Five Degrees of Heat from Friday night’s game:
— 1. What’s next: While the Heat had a chance Friday to move up in the seedings, it now makes moot Sunday afternoon’s regular-season finale at Kaseya Center against the East-worst Washington Wizards.
Based on the urgency of what is to follow, it is highly unlikely Spoelstra plays any of his rotation players on Sunday, likely opening the door for the likes of Keshad Johnson, Josh Christopher, Isaiah Stevens and possibly Terry Rozer and Jaime Jaquez Jr.
— 2. Game flow: The Heat went up 17 early and closed the first period ahead 35-24. The Pelicans then closed within six in the second period before the Heat took a 71-54 lead into halftime.
From there, the Heat opened the second half with a 10-0 run and kept going from there, pushing their lead into the 30s by the midpoint of the third period.
Adebayo and Herro were subbed out with 5:01 to play in the third and the Heat up 97-61.
— 3. Still stroking: For the second consecutive game, Adebayo converted a pair of 3-pointers early in the first period.
The first conversion extended his career-best streak of games with at least one 3-pointer to 12. The second was the 100th 3-pointer of his career.
He was up to 14 points and nine rebounds by halftime,
He closed 8 of 12 from the field, including 4 of 6 from beyond the arc.
— 4. Herro, too: With his first 3-pointer, Herro joined Robinson as the only Heat players over the Heat’s 37 years with at least 250 in a season. Herro’s previous single-season high had been 203 in 2022-23. Robinson has reached at least 250 twice in his Heat career.
Herro was up to 17 points by halftime, extending his career-best streak of games with at least 20 points to 10.
He closed 7 of 10 from the field and 2 of 3 on 3-pointers, with four assists and four rebounds.
— 5. Playoff wild card?: Robinson stands as somewhat of a postseason wild card.
Friday, he again was ...