2024 Play-In Tournament (East): #7 Philadelphia 76ers vs #8 Miami Heat

[HotelVitale]

How can you call Jimmy a fraud? Like what. He’s taken a team to the nba finals TWICE. Why is it worse if you get to the finals and lose compared to losing in the first round??

I think people are right to be like 'don't forget that Caleb Martin/Gabe Vincent/Herro played awesome in those 2 games!' cuz it's true, but that shouldn't be at the expense of what Butler's done in a lot more than 2 games. He's been absurdly heroically good over many years, even if it's also true that he's needed other guys to come through to help bridge the gaps on those deeper runs.

As someone else mentioned, we all know Butler isn't a MVP-type guy so it feels like a weird reach to poke holes in his reputation. Both things are true: he's not consistently a top-2/3 guy in terms of his impact on every game and he can be a little hot and cold even in the PO, but he also has played like a legit MVP-type guy in the biggest moments multiple times and absolutely willed his under-talented teams to unlikely victories. Hard guy for me not to appreciate, variation of how Kawhi isn't going to be Jokic or Luka in terms of shaping a whole team's season but man will I never doubt him after seeing some of those PO games.

[HotelVitale]

I would be very shocked to see Maxey put up 30 a night with OG on him most of the game.

On the other hands sixers probably will have to put Oubre or Batum on Brunson and that should be advantage knicks.

All on Embiids health if he looks like he looked tonight knicks will also have a huge advantage on the boards.

It will have to be guys like Lowry/Batum/Harris/Hield hitting 3's to beat the knicks.

Joel embiid will be very limited like he was tonight by game 2 in that series he’s gonna be running on fumes sad but true he’s clearly not healthy enough for a playoff run

It's really hard for me to imagine Embiid going through a whole series against the Knicks in his current state. I don't know if he looks injured or just gassed all the time.

If I was betting on the series I'd probably take this into account and significantly ding the Sixers' chances. But Embiid's unpredictable with things like that, he's come back from some injuries and been immediately awesome and then come back from others and seemed totally out of sync. Last night looked partially like him being thrown off his game (which is sadly way too common and easy for PO defenses to do), and I'm holding out some hope that he'll look less shell-shocked against a defense that's less swarming.

And MIA's defense was killer in the first half yesterday. They made it extremely hard for Embiid to even get the ball in his spots since the guards were getting pressed and chased even before getting into the sets, and then swiping hands were coming at Embiid as soon as he was catching. I know NY plays good defense but it seems a little different than the Bam-Jimmy-Highsmith swarm and the wacky zone stuff that MIA was doing.

[drekwins]

First,the heat were awful in the 2 play in games last season....second,the heat are always tough to play come playoffs time with a great HC and Playoffs Jimmy...Make 2 finals in the last 4 years,almost 3 in 4 years

We shall see. The Knicks have shooters now. The shooting is like night and day from last year. As far as Boston, Mazzulla was awful and overmatched last year by Spo.

TBH, the eastern conference last year was a joke. Miami really wasn't that amazing.

Of course with the Butler injury,they have no chance this year

This was posted assuming a healthy Butler. With an injured Butler, they're easily swept.

[Jadoogar]

The fact that all the Heat playoff runs are based on some random role player turning into an allstar, it's really fitting they lost because Nic Batum had a career game.