Miami Heat hold off the Atlanta Hawks for a big win!

The Miami Heat defeated their division rival Atlanta Hawks 113-109 in their final home game of the regular season at the FTX Arena on Friday April 8th.

The Heat already had the first seed in the Eastern Conference locked up before the start of the game. It is just the fourth time in franchise history that they have the top seed in the conference, so lets take a moment to appreciate the amazing season this team has given us thus far.

This entire game had a playoff feel to it, which makes sense when you consider this is one of the more likely matchups in the first round. So I was excited to see how the Heat approached it with the one seed locked up and the Hawks still fighting for positioning and early on it was the Hawks and specifically Clint Capela who was dominating in the paint. He clearly has a size advantage on Bam Adebayo and he uses it like a veteran does. He had a double double in the first half. Trae Young wasn’t his usual scoring threat early on, but his playmaking and quick decision making was causing a lot trouble for the Heat defense. He would then turn it up in the second quarter with 19 points on ridiculous efficiency.

For the Heat, it just felt like they couldn’t gather any consistent momentum in the first half. Tyler Herro continued to do his thing, but this time he was showing off his improved playmaking abilities finishing the game with nine assists and just one turnover. There were a couple of instances in particular in the first half that caught my attention. The first was when Herro drove inside and was met by three Hawks players and was able to deliver a perfect dime to Gabe Vincent in the corner, who splashed in the three. The second was at the end of the first quarter, similar situation with Tyler driving into the paint and drawing two to three defenders, he fakes the pass to the corner and finds Gabe once again for the top of the key three pointer at the buzzer. This was the perfect game for John Hollinger to watch the “chucker” in action as he was completely in his bag tonight with fadeaway jumpers and off the dribble bank shots. He was just showing the whole package and solidifying his case as the 6MOY.

The Big 3 of Bam, Jimmy Butler and Kyle Lowry did their thing tonight as well. Butler was dominant tonight, getting wherever he wanted at anytime against the Hawks defense and settling things down at the line for Miami when they needed it. He finished the night with 20 points on 5-for-10 shooting and 10-for-12 from the line. Lowry just continues to show that his ramp up for the real season is already here with 16 points on 7-for-10 shooting and five assists. Honestly, for Kyle it goes beyond stats as his leadership and calmness in big moments is going to be huge for this Heat team when it matters most. Bam continues his streak of games shooting over 50% from the field as he finishes the game with a team-high 24 points on 8-for-14 shooting, six rebounds, four assists and two steals. With these guys playing like this it’ll be extremely tough for any team to beat them in a 7 game series.

The second half was another series of runs from both teams. The Hawks were getting most of their contributions from either Young, Capela, Kevin Huerter or Bogdan Bogdanovic. Pretty much everyone else was a non factor on the offensive end for the Hawks, which would eventually lead to their downfall as Young was trying to carry the offense on his back and shot just 2-for-12 in the 2nd half. He wasn’t finding the open man as quick as he was in the first, mainly because the Heat changed their strategy and did less double teams. This would force Young to take his man one on one practically every time, which would often be Max Strus down the stretch, but the Heat stuck with their game plan and finished the game off strong.

Clutch plays from Lowry and Herro gave the Heat the lead with just over a minute remaining after they had gone down by six with about three minutes left. The threat of Trae Young hitting a dagger three always looms when he’s on the court, but the Heat handled it perfectly and forced him to take some very tough shots down the stretch that just had no shot of going in. In the end, it would be the Miami Heat who come up with bigger plays down the stretch and capture a win in their final home game of the regular season.

They are now on a season-high six game winning streak as the playoffs are just around the corner. Doesn’t get any better than that. The Heat will now wrap up this incredible regular season with a road game against the Orlando Magic on Friday April 10th at the Amway Center.