Playoff-clinching win provides some clarity on Heat draft pick situation. Where do things stand?
The Miami Heat earned a playoff-clinching win in Atlanta on Friday, but lost its own first-round pick for this year's NBA Draft on the same night.
That's because the Heat owed a 2025 lottery-protected first-round selection to the Oklahoma City Thunder — a pick first sent out by Miami in the 2019 trade to acquire Jimmy Butler.
By clinching the Eastern Conference's No. 8 playoff seed and a first-round matchup against the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers with a 123-114 overtime win over the Atlanta Hawks on Friday night at State Farm Arena, the Heat will not be part of the May 12 NBA Draft Lottery and its first-round pick this year will go to the Thunder.
The Heat's pick that will be conveyed to the Thunder for the June 25 draft will be for the No. 15 selection.
If the Heat would have lost to the Hawks, it would have entered the draft lottery with the 11th lottery seed that comes with a 2 percent chance of landing the top pick and a 9.4 percent chance of snagging a top-four pick during next month's draft lottery.
With the Heat conveying the pick to the Thunder this year, it avoids owing a completely unprotected 2026 first-round pick to Oklahoma City. The fact that this year's selection will go to the Thunder also preserves the lottery protections on the 2027 first-round pick it owes to the Charlotte Hornets as part of last season's Terry Rozier trade, which would become a totally unprotected 2028 first-round selection if the pick is not conveyed to the Hornets in 2027.
While the Heat won't have its own first-round pick this year, it's still in position to make a selection in the first round. That's because the Heat will receive the Warriors' first-round pick this year as part of the Butler trade made in February.
The Heat was set to receive the Warriors' first-round pick this year as long as it fell between No. 11 and 30 overall, which it will after Golden State clinched a playoff spot through the play-in tournament.
The Warriors' first-round pick that the Heat will receive this year will be either 18th, 19th or 20th overall, with the order to be determined by a random drawing among the Warriors, Memphis Grizzlies and Milwaukee Bucks that all finished the regular season at 48-34. The random drawing will be held on Monday at 3 p.m.
With the Heat receiving further clarity on its draft pick situation on Friday, it will enter the offseason with the ability to trade two first-round picks (Golden State's 2025 pick and either its 2030 or 2031 pick) ahead of the June draft.
NBA teams are only allowed to trade picks up to seven drafts into the future and league rules prohibit teams from being without future first-round picks in consecutive years.
X-factors
The duo of Davion Mitchell and Haywood Highsmith provided important minutes off the Heat's bench in Friday's playoff-clinching win.
Mitchell spent a chunk of the game defending Hawks star guard Trae Young, limiting him to just two field-goal attempts while guarding him for six minutes of game clock, according to NBA tracking stats. Then Mitchell got hot in the clutch, scoring nine points on 3-of-4 shooting from three-point range in overtime after a shaky first half that included 0-of-4 shooting from the field.
'For him to struggle like that in the first half and then have that kind of fourth quarter and overtime really speaks to his competitive character,' Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Mitchell. 'He's got something inside of him and it brought out the best of him tonight. We needed every single bit of it.'
Highsmith totaled 12 points on 5-of-9 shooting from the field and 2-of-6 shooting on threes, 10 rebounds, three assists and two steals in 40 minutes off the bench Friday. His biggest basket of the night came on a one-handed tip-in to push the Heat's lead to three with 1:03 left in the fourth quarter.
'I mentioned it to the team afterwards that it was quietly — or not so quietly — one of his best games that he's had in a Miami Heat uniform,' Spoelstra said when asked about Highsmith. 'It was the hustle plays, the defense, all the intangibles, and then that one-handed put-back rebound. I mean, that kind of put everything kind of at ease. It was a one-point game and that just gave us a little bit more of a cushion.'
Mitchell and Highsmith played 36 minutes together on Friday, including all but 19 seconds of the fourth quarter and overtime period.s.
'They're being stars in their role and that's what we need them to do,' Heat center Bam Adebayo said of Mitchell and Highsmith. 'Obviously, you see Davion's offense, making shots, and H's offense. But the little things that they do throughout the game, that's what really gets us going, that's what really gets the group together and getting in a rhythm.'
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