Heat’s ability to stay the course pays off in first-round upset of top-seeded Bucks

The Miami Heat made it all the way to the Eastern Conference finals last season as the top playoff seed. A year later, the Heat eliminated the No. 1 seed in the first round of the playoffs as the No. 8 seed.

“It makes for a hell of a story,” Heat guard Gabe Vincent said.

What was one of the most frustrating regular seasons in franchise history has already turned into one of the most memorable and surprising postseasons in franchise history after the eighth-seeded Heat shocked the top-seeded Bucks, which finished the regular season with an NBA-best 58-24 record.

The Heat rallied from a 16-point fourth-quarter deficit to escape with a 128-126 series-clinching overtime victory over the Bucks on Wednesday night at Fiserv Forum. The Heat — powered by Jimmy Butler — won the best-of-7 series 4-1 to become only the sixth No. 8 seed to eliminate a No. 1 seed in the first round of the playoffs since the current 16-team NBA playoff format was instituted for the 1983-84 season.

What does the schedule for the Heat’s second-round playoff series vs. the Knicks look like?

“We just continued to stay the course,” Heat guard Kyle Lowry said of the rough road that led to Wednesday’s triumphant moment. “We never got too up, we never got too down. We never got emotionally erratic. We kind of just stayed there and understood the situation that we would be in. We always said let’s just get it down to an opportunity to give us a fighting chance.”

The Heat’s opponent in the second round will be the fifth-seeded New York Knicks, who won their first-round series 4-1 over the fourth-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers.

Game 1 between the Heat and Knicks is Sunday at 1 p.m. on ABC.

“It’s always good for the league when there’s a Heat-Knicks playoff series,” said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, referring to the organization’s rivalry with the Knicks that formed after four straight years of intense playoff matchups from 1997 to 2000.

But Heat coaches and players didn’t want to dive too deep into their upcoming series against the Knicks late Wednesday night. Instead, they reflected on their path to this point after closing the regular season with a 44-38 record that and needing to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament.

Since the NBA’s play-in tournament began in the 2020-21 season, the Heat is the first team that has qualified for the playoffs through the play-in tournament to win a first-round series. Play-in teams entered this postseason 0-8 in first-round playoff series. during the previous two seasons.

“Our guys are extremely mentally tough,” Spoelstra said. “We just wanted to embrace all of these experiences. We’ve never been in a play-in before. Both those games were great competition, and we’ve never been an eight seed where we’ve had an opportunity to win. We wanted to embrace this opportunity. It’s just been a harrowing two and a half weeks.”

Even in a series that included just one loss, the Heat experienced its fair share of adversity.

The Heat lost starting guard Tyler Herro after he broke his hand in Game 1. He’s not expected back until the NBA Finals, if Miami makes it that far.

The Heat also lost reserve guard Victor Oladipo after he tore the patellar tendon in his left knee. He will miss the rest of the playoffs.

“It’s just been one of these seasons, for whatever reason, we’ve been dealing with a great deal of adversity,” Spoelstra said. “Guys in and out of the lineup and all these clutch games, close games and then having to go through the play-in. It feels like this was the finish of our second-round series because of that play-in. But for whatever reason, and this is what you always hope for, all these experiences have brought this team closer together.”

But none of this would have been possible without Butler, who dominated the series to average 37.6 points, six rebounds, 4.8 assists and 1.8 steals per game while shooting an ultra-efficient 59.7 percent from the field and 12 of 27 (44.4 percent) from three-point range in the five games.

Butler is on a historic pace. No player in NBA history has finished the playoffs averaging 37 or more points on 59 percent shooting or better from the field.

“I’ve said a lot about how I feel about Jimmy,” Spoelstra said. “He is us and we are him. I just respect him so much as being such a unique world-class elite competitor. A lot of guys play the game of basketball in this league, he competes to win. That’s a different language, and he’s desperate and urgent and maniacal and sometimes psychotic about the will to try to win and make everybody in the building feel it. That’s why he is us and we are him.”

Butler turned in his seventh and eighth 40-point playoff performances as a member of the Heat in Games 4 and 5 of the series. No other player in franchise history has more 40-point playoff games in a Heat jersey, with Dwyane Wade (seven) and LeBron James (three) second and third on that list.

“I’m just in a groove, I’m in a rhythm,” Butler said. “I tell you, I’ve been shooting the ball an incredible amount this series. But I feel like they’re all shots that I know that I can make and my teammates keep telling me to shoot the ball, shoot the ball and attack. And that’s just what it was.”

In a way, all the adversity the Heat went through in the regular season prepared it to pull off the first-round upset.

The Heat played in a lot of close games in the regular season, finishing with the second-most clutch games (one that has a margin of five points or fewer inside the final five minutes of the fourth quarter) in the NBA with 54. Miami also tied the single-season NBA record for the most wins by five points or less with 24 such victories in the regular season.

The Heat needed to win clutch games in Games 4 and 5 that were both decided by less than five points.

As for finding a way to overcome injuries to Herro and Oladipo, the Heat has plenty of experience in that situation, too. Miami closed the regular season with the second-most missed games in the NBA (289) due to injury, according to Spotrac.

“This group has just been tested time and time again throughout the season,” Vincent said. “I mentioned this before, but it’s almost like we were meant for this. We were meant for the ups and downs, we were meant for the battles. We’re here and all that stuff we went through is finally paying off.”

After a wild regular season that went straight into the play-in tournament and then right into the playoffs, the Heat finally has a chance to rest for a few days. The Heat returns to practice in Miami on Saturday before flying to New York to continue its improbable playoff run Sunday against the Knicks.

“We’re not just happy with four wins. We got a bigger goal,” Lowry said. “These next couple days, we can get our bodies right, our minds right and prepare for a really good team, a talented team. We got to be ready to go in there for a battle.”