Last night was very confusing for any basketball fan. At stake: the Miami Heat's first-round draft pick. The Heat could lose it — by winning the game. And the 76ers, by losing, could snatch the pick away. The Heat, in the end, won the game, but the team also looks to have kept its draft pick by the end of the night. Confused yet?
In the epic tankathon, the Heat trotted out a starting lineup of
The Heat pulled out a 105-101 win, but in the end the win did not cost Miami any ping-pong balls in the draft. Why? Because the Brooklyn Nets also won in Orlando, thus leaving the Heat all alone as the tenth-worst team in the NBA.
The Heat now has a better than 90 percent chance of keeping its top-ten pick in next year's draft and a slightly better than 1 percent chance to land the top pick.
This, of course, is all so sad to even be excited about. The Heat clinching a lottery pick for the first time since 2008 is not what Heat fans are used to cheering about. With Dwyane Wade's career winding down, 2014-15 very much feels like a lost year. The upside of this disaster of a season is that the team now has the opportunity to add a solid young rotation player to a team that should come back whole next season.NBA draft lottery, held May 19, will determine Miami Heat draft fate. Odds: 1st: 1.1%; 2nd: 1.3%; 3rd: 1.6%; 10th: 87.0%; Sent to PHI: 9.1%.
— Albert Random (@AlbertRandom1) April 16, 2015
Chris Bosh is expected to be cleared for action by September, giving him a few weeks to get back into NBA shape. Luol Deng is likely to pick up a $10 million player option for next season and could possibly fit in much better on a team that relies on his offense far less than it did this season. Goran Dragic has stated numerous times he'd like to return to the Heat long-term. The most likely winner of the NBA's Most Improved Player award this season, Hassan Whiteside was the surprise star of the NBA this year and is under contract next season. Josh McRoberts, one of the main pickups last offseason, is already nearly 100 percent healthy and will provide much-needed shooting skills next year.
It seems the Heat will not be your average-looking post-lottery-pick team in 2015-16. Thank God, because this year was unbearable to watch.