The Heat have lost six of their last seven.
After last night’s heartbreaking defeat to the New York Knicks, the Miami Heat will look to bounce back at hme against the Atlanta Hawks inside Miami-Dade Arena, where the Heat have lost three straight games, on Saturday.
Despite Jimmy Butler’s remarkable 33-point performance, Julius Randle’s dominant 43-point outing — including a last-second heave — en route to the Knicks’ 122-120 win over the Heat, who have lost six of their last seven games.
The Hawks, who will also be playing on a second-night of a back-to-back, is coming off a 129-111 win over the Portland Trail Blazers in the second game of Quin Snyder’s head coaching career with Atlanta. Dejounte Murray strung together a season-high 41 points, five rebounds and six assists in last night’s win, shooting 17-of-22 from the floor with five 3-pointers.
Miami and Atlanta are now a game within each other in the play-in race; a win on Saturday would reward Atlanta the tiebreaker, theoretically putting Miami another half-game back of the Hawks. Miami is currently 2.5 games back of the Brooklyn Nets for the sixth-and-final non play-in spot.
The Heat are 2.5-point favorites ahead of Saturday’s meeting.
INACTIVE/INJURIES:
Note: Miami and Atlanta have yet to submit both of their injury reports at the time of this publishing.
PROJECTED STARTING 5:
BROADCAST INFO:
Tipoff: 8:00 PM EST
TV: Bally Sports Sun, NBA League Pass
RADIO: WQAM 560 & The HEAT Radio Network (Jason Jackson)
SPANISH RADIO: WAQI 710AM & The HEAT Spanish Radio Network (José Pañeda)
Come back to Hot Hot Hoops at game time to join our GameThread and chat about the game live with other Heat fans!