Heat earns win over Raptors to keep hopes of avoiding play-in alive. Takeaways and details

Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra doesn’t want his players worrying about the standings in the final days of the regular season — not during the late-season rough patch the Heat has run into.

But after dropping three of its previous five games, the Heat (45-36) took care of business against the struggling Toronto Raptors, 125-103, on Friday night at Kaseya Center to keep all eyes on the Eastern Conference standings.

That’s because the Heat will enter the final day of the regular season on Sunday with a chance to avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament.

The Heat kept that possibility alive by jumping on the Raptors early and never looking back, pulling ahead by as many as 19 points in the first half and extending that lead up to 25 points in the second half.

The Raptors (25-56), which have now lost 18 of their last 20 games, never held a lead in the game.

Six Heat players finished with double-digit points led by Nikola Jovic, who totaled 22 points on 9-of-18 shooting from the field and 4-of-10 shooting on threes, five rebounds and two assists.

Heat rookie Jaime Jaquez Jr. added 20 points, four rebounds, nine assists, two steals and one block.

RJ Barrett scored a game-high 35 points for the Raptors.

The Heat closes the regular season on Sunday afternoon with another game against the Raptors in Miami and a chance to climb as high as fifth place in the East.

“You just live in the present moment,” Spoelstra said following Friday’s win, continuing to downplay any discussion regarding postseason seeding scenarios. “We have a lot to work on just with us. So I think that’s actually a good thing just to focus on our games and focus on playing well and playing for each other, doing things that we know lead to winning. This was a step, for sure.”

Five takeaways from the Heat’s win over the Raptors on Friday:

While still in eighth place in the East, the Heat’s slim chances of avoiding the play-in tournament remain alive.

Friday’s win over the Raptors paired with the Philadelphia 76ers’ win over the Orlando Magic and the Indiana Pacers’ loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers left the door open for the Heat to possibly avoid the play-in depending on what happens on the final day of the regular season on Sunday.

With no NBA games on Saturday and all 30 teams playing on Sunday, here’s what has to happen on the final day of the regular season for the Heat to crack the top six in the East and narrowly escape the play-in tourney:

▪ The Heat needs to earn another win over the Raptors, while the Magic loses its regular-season finale against Milwaukee Bucks. But that’s not all, the 76ers also need to lose at home in their regular-season finale against the Brooklyn Nets. In this scenario, the Heat, Magic and 76ers would all finish with 36 losses and the Heat would win the three-way tie because it would win the Southeast Division based on holding the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Magic after winning the regular-season series between the two teams 3-1. The Heat would be the No. 6 seed because the division winner wins a tie with teams that don’t win their division.

OR

▪ The Heat needs to earn another win over the Raptors, while the Magic loses its regular-season finale against the Bucks and the Pacers drop their regular-season finale against the Atlanta Hawks. In this scenario, the Heat, Magic and Pacers would all finish with 36 losses and the Heat would also win this three-way tie because it would win the division based on holding the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Magic.

The Heat could actually finish as high as fifth in the East if a combination of both of those scenarios happen on Sunday:

▪ If the Heat gets another win over the Raptors, while the Magic loses its regular-season finale against the Bucks, the Pacers drop their regular-season finale against the Hawks and the 76ers lose in their regular-season finale against the Nets. In this scenario, all four teams would finish with 36 losses. The Heat would win this four-way tie because it would win the division based on holding the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Magic, entering the playoffs as the East’s No. 5 seed.

If neither of those low-percentage scenarios transpire, the Heat will be competing for a playoff berth in the play-in tournament next week as either the East’s No. 7 or No. 8 seed against either the 76ers, Pacers or Magic. The play-in tourney features the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference.

“We’re just going to take it one game at a time,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said.

The Heat again played without rotation regulars Terry Rozier and Duncan Robinson.

Rozier, who has started in 30 straight appearances, missed his third straight game because of neck spasms.

Robinson, who has started in 17 straight appearances, also missed his third straight game with a lingering back injury labeled as left facet syndrome. He initially missed five games last month with the back issue before returning to play in five games and then again being sidelined by the injury for the last three games.

With Rozier and Robinson again out, the Heat went with the starting lineup of Tyler Herro, Caleb Martin, Jimmy Butler, Jovic and Adebayo for the third straight game.

The Heat used Jaquez, Kevin Love, Haywood Highsmith and Delon Wright off the bench to complete its nine-man rotation on Friday.

Spoelstra said after Wednesday’s loss to the Dallas Mavericks that the ball had “gotten a little sticky of late.” But the ball moved well on Friday.

After recording fewer than 30 assists in seven straight games, the Heat ended that streak to finish Friday’s win with 37 assists and just seven turnovers.

“The ball was moving, it was popping, it was getting to where it needed to go,” Spoelstra said. “It was just good to see. It was good to have a night like that for everybody in the locker room offensively.”

The Heat’s crisp ball movement began early with 10 assists on 12 made field goals in the first quarter. It marked the most first-quarter assists the Heat has recorded since also dishing out 10 assists in the opening quarter of a March 26 loss to the Golden State Warriors.

By halftime, the Heat had 21 assists for the second-most first-half assists it has recorded this season.

“For sure in the first half, we set the tone just with ball and player movement,” Spoelstra said. “That was something that everybody came intentional into tonight to do a better job of that.”

The Heat continued to move the ball, adding another 16 assists in the second half.

When it was done, the Heat finished Friday’s win with its third-highest single-game assist percentage (the percentage of the team’s field goals that came off assists) of the season at 82.2 percent.

Jaquez led the charge with a team-high and career-high nine assists on Friday. Butler finished with seven assists. And Herro and Wright each recorded five assists.

The Heat improved to 10-1 this season when finishing a game with more than 30 assists. The Heat is also now 4-0 this season when finishing a game with an assist percentage of higher than 80 percent.

Like most teams over the last few weeks, the Raptors sent double teams at the Heat’s leading duo of Adebayo and Butler in the post.

But Adebayo and Butler didn’t force the action and they didn’t need to, with others stepping up around them as part of a balanced Heat scoring attack.

Adebayo finished with 19 points on 8-of-10 shooting from the field, 1-of-2 shooting from three-point range and 2-of-4 shooting from the foul line, six rebounds and three assists.

Butler closed with 14 points on 5-of-7 shooting from the field, 2-of-2 shooting on threes and 2-of-4 shooting from the foul line, three rebounds and seven assists.

After just finishing a brutal stretch of five games in seven days, Friday’s wire-to-wire win allowed for the Heat to manage minutes throughout the roster.

Jaquez was the only Heat player who logged more than 30 minutes on Friday.

Adebayo, who played a total of 78 minutes in the previous two games, was on the court for just 25 minutes against the Raptors. The lopsided score allowed Adebayo to spend the entire fourth quarter on the bench.

Butler, who played a total of 80 minutes in the previous two games, logged 29 minutes on Friday.

Herro, who played a total of 84 minutes in the previous two games, was on the court for 29 minutes on Friday.

“We were able to use our depth and we were able to create some separation there in the fourth quarter so nobody had to overextend,” Spoelstra said. “The back-to-back, there was a little bit overextending in Atlanta and Dallas. But this is that time of the year right now. So having a game like this, it feels like a spring break. No disrespect to the opponent at all, it’s just when you’re not playing guys 38 minutes and grinding through everything, it was good.”