We start the postseason for the Miami Heat with a play-in game Tuesday, stare at the playoff situation a little harder for the Florida Panthers after Tuesday’s 2-1 overtime loss to Toronto, and there’s one thing both teams share beyond unimpressive regular seasons that offered little hope this winter:
They write their story from here.
They don’t have to be two teams that leave the stage pretending they are better than they actually are. They still have a chance to be those teams over the next week or two.
Anyone who thinks they don’t have it in them doesn’t remember the ride the Heat took to within one shot of the NBA Finals last year or hasn’t watched the manner the Panthers have clawed back into contention over the past few weeks.
So, just who are these Heat and Panthers?
There’s another question before answering that for the Heat: Who are half the teams in the NBA playoffs? The regular season used to show us. But the regular season is broken, with players skipping games and too many teams not caring, right to the end, when the Dallas Mavericks decided they’d rather tank than grab a play-in berth this week.
LeBron James’ Los Angeles Lakers are in the play-in game three years after winning the NBA title. So, too, are the Heat, who played the Lakers in those Finals and and now play Atlanta on Tuesday.
“At this point, you are who you are,’ Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We have great habits, particularly the way we ended the season. I like the way things are trending.”
The understood trend is Jimmy Butler in the playoffs. He can carry this team. Playoff Jimmy did it three years ago in taking the Heat to the Finals and again last year when they came within his missed 3-point shot of the Finals.
Butler and the Los Angeles Clippers’ Paul George are the only two players whose points, rebounds and assists actually rise from the regular season to the playoffs. The question remains if the rest of the Heat have it in them to make a run.
Spoelstra keeps saying, “We are built for this,” and he’s earned the right to say so. The Panthers, though, went through a transformative season actually building themselves just for this moment. They decided winning the President’s Cup as last year’s best regular-season team didn’t matter.
Out went the big offense. In came coach Paul Maurice and a tighter system conducive to playoff hockey. They traded lifelong Panther Jonathan Huberdeau for Matthew Tkachuk, who already is the Butler of the Panthers, the player who can change everything with his talent and attitude.
The Panthers also have a rare story. Entering Monday night’s game against Toronto, career minor-leaguer Alex Lyon has taken over for veteran goalie Sergei Bobrovsky as the starter. This is simply a case of Maurice riding the hottest hand.
Lyon, 30, played only 24 NHL games before this year. He’s played more than half that this year in going 9-3-1 entering Tuesday. The Panthers asking Lyon to carry them is like the Miami Dolphins asking third-string quarterback Skylar Thompson to carry their hopes. But look at Lyon. Before the two scant goals he gave up Tuesday, he was 6-0 over the previous six games with a .956 save percentage. Boston’s Linus Ullmark leads the league with a .938 save percentage this season.
The Panthers’ fight isn’t just for the playoffs on some level. It’s to avoid Ullmark’s Boston team that set an all-time wins mark this season. Unlike the Panthers last year, they come with a playoff portfolio to avoid, if you can.
The Panthers were as many as nine points out of a playoff spot this season. Now they’re on the verge of going into them as a hot team. History says they have a better chance of making a run than the Heat, simply because hockey is full of low seeds that win in the playoffs and the NBA has few of them.
The larger point is after too much losing the past six months, too much time being knocked down, the Heat and Panthers both have the chance to get up. They both think they’re better than what people say they are. Now they have the chance to prove it.
()
