Heat at crossroads of contention or survival

MIAMI — The respect is that of a championship contender.

The place in the standings is that of a survivalist.

For the Miami Heat, the dichotomy lives on, once again viewed as something more than the standings indicate amid this scramble to avoid the play-in round.

No sooner, for example, did the Heat complete one of their most impressive victories of the season this past Monday at Golden 1 Center, then Sacramento Kings guard De’Aaron Fox paused to pay homage to the Heat’s perseverance.

“It’s like a running joke,” Fox said. “Regardless of who Miami puts out there, it looks like that’s a team that played in the Finals or played together for a while.”

That, of course, was the night the Heat were without Jimmy Butler, Tyler Herro and Nikola Jovic, among others.

“They have guys who do their job and they have guys who come out, regardless of how long they’ve been with the team, they play hard. So it’s just their continuity. They play hard. They understand what they need to do.”

Three days later, after surviving a furious late Heat rally to hold for victory at Ball Arena in a rematch of last season’s NBA Finals, Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic took stock of the night’s challenge.

“They play with a lot of speed and poise on both ends of the floor. They’re really aggressive,” the two-time MVP and MVP of last year’s Finals said. “They know what they’re doing and it’s hard to play against that team.”

And yet with that loss, the Heat fell to No. 8 in the East, into the play-in bracket, the portion of the postseason mix where one or two losses mean an exit before the best-of-seven first round.

Good enough to challenge the best.

Average enough to stand in the middle of the pack.

As with last season, when the Heat went into the play-in round as a No. 7 seed and exited at No. 8, the discussion as February turned to March was of peaking at the proper time.

Considering how last season went, it is a difficult argument to counter.

“We’re not quite there just yet, but we have a little bit more time to get there,” Butler said. “We know who we are. We know it’s almost close to the most important time of the year. So, we’ll be OK.”

But the play-in also comes with a trap-door.

If not for a fourth-quarter play-in comeback against the Chicago Bulls, last season would have ended in April instead of June.

So while Butler bides, most are tracking the East race.

“It’s not that we’re obsessed with looking at the standings, but we’re all human,” coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We’re competitors. We look at the standings. And I think that’s good for the league and it’s good for our team. It’s good for the players.”

So let the scoreboard-watching commence.

“I watch it,” Herro said of monitoring the playoff race. “I watch it after the All-Star break, because I feel like that’s when games are more meaningful, because of how close the standings are. I’m paying attention to them for sure, even watching the games when I’m not playing, seeing how competitive the games are.”

Spoelstra said that as with last season, it makes this six-week run to end of the regular season compelling.

“You’re competing for something before you get to the playoffs,” he said. “And a few moving parts, but you can still figure out where your identity is, commit to that.