How 76ers outlasted Heat to win NBA Play-In Tournament game; Heat's Jimmy Butler suffers knee injury

Erik Spoelstra, on the broadcast right now, told ESPN's Lisa Salters that Jimmy Butler "wants to play right now" after appearing to injure his right leg, but "we'll just have to see and we'll want to be responsible at the same time."

Butler is already back in the game.

PHILADELPHIA — Jimmy Butler split a pair of free throws and still appeared to be walking gingerly as the first quarter ended. It's 23-22 Heat, and their ability to withstand Bam Adebayo's foul trouble could loom large. Miami finished the quarter on a 21-13 run after Adebayo left the game thanks to Philadelphia not figuring out Miami's zone.

We should not be surprised by the, errr, messiness of this game. While the raw numbers point out that the Heat and the 76ers had the fifth and 11th best defenses in the league, the 76ers' defensive rating while Embiid was on the floor during the season was equivalent of the league's third stingiest.

PHILADELPHIA — Jimmy Butler is down and very slow to get up at the end of the first quarter. He seems to be in a good deal of pain and discomfort after taking a hit while leaking out for a layup in transition and colliding with Philadelphia's Kelly Oubre Jr. He's limping now to the bench. Obviously, this is a critical moment for this game.

The 76ers seem to have no idea how to attack what appears to be a 1-2-2 Miami Heat zone. They have seven turnovers already and are having trouble even getting the ball inside the 3-point line. Go up against master tactician Erik Spoelstra in a one-game scenario at your own risk.

(By the way, you know who'd be helpful in getting Joel Embiid the ball against this zone? James Harden. *ducks*)

PHILADELPHIA — Joel Embiid checks out inside the four-minute mark, but you could see how much the 76ers changed things once Bam Adebayo left the game with foul trouble. The 76ers isolated Embiid three times in quick succession — twice in the post, and once at the top of the key. The first time, the Heat committed a defensive three-seconds violation. The second time, Kevin Love fell, and Embiid zipped a pass out to Tyrese Maxey for a 3.

The third time, Embiid was slow, and Jimmy Butler came from the weak side to get a steal and uncontested dunk. Embiid has taken huge leaps as a passer this year, and perhaps that is where the rust from his long injury absence is showing: As a decision-maker facing pressure. So long as Adebayo is out, the Heat will surely try to mix up schemes when Embiid is out there.

PHILADELPHIA — The Heat have started sending a second defender at Joel Embiid and it has frazzled the 76ers' big man a little. Jimmy Butler swiped him a few possessions ago. Then, Embiid lined up in the corner, maybe creating an angle where he could see a defender coming.

Anyway, Paul Reed is in now late in the first quarter, so we'll see how Miami keeps executing this strategy and if Philadelphia and Embiid adjust.

A reminder: Terry Rozier, the Heat's marquee trade-deadline-adjacent addition this season, is out tonight with a neck injury. That's an especially big absence in this matchup. Rozier's pick-and-roll and off-the-dribble shotmaking would've come in handy to combat the 76ers' strategy of sitting Joel Embiid in the paint on defense.

PHILADELPHIA — The defensive downgrade from Bam Adebayo to Kevin Love will be critical. Before the game, 76ers coach Nick Nurse was extremely complimentary of Adebayo, one of the league's most physical defenders.

"He's got great side-to-side feet. He's got great start-stop (ability), great change of direction," Nurse said. "Obviously vertically, he can get off the ground. He plays it willingly. He takes defense seriously. He plays it with pride."

PHILADELPHIA — One interesting thing to watch at the start of every game: Matchups. The Heat have Jimmy Butler on Tyrese Maxey to start the game, throwing their best defender on the Sixers' top perimeter threat. Length and size can cause issues for Maxey and Butler has both against him. We'll see how (and if) the Sixers try to shake him, or even if the Heat keep Butler on Maxey for most of the game. Maxey tried to walk into a pull-up 3 on the Sixers' third possession that barely grazed iron.

The 76ers had Joel Embiid start on Bam Adebayo, but Embiid hung back near the paint and allowed Adebayo some space on the perimeter as he floated around there early on. Philadelphia likes to deploy Embiid as a defensive clog and let him hang back near the rim rather than try to contest out on the perimeter.

PHILADELPHIA — The NBA's promotional push for the playoffs includes Chris Rock pestering some of the league's stars, including Jayson Tatum, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokić, asking whether they have an extra gear at this time of the year.

This whole campaign might as well be based on Jimmy Butler, who has gained a deserved reputation for raising his game in the playoffs. While it is weird to hear Rock ask about "Playoff Jayson" to Tatum, it was decidedly normal to hear a reporter ask Heat coach Erik Spoelstra about "Playoff Jimmy."

"Obviously there have been a lot of narratives about that," Spoelstra said about Butler. "This is just high-level competition when you get into these scenarios — and even the Play-In, it's really high-level competition. I want our entire roster just to embrace it, enjoy it. We're grateful to be in a game that is going to be as competitive as this. This is what you want when you're in this business."

Spoelstra is a company man, apparently. All the same, he probably did not volunteer his time to be a part of the commercials.

One tactic Heat coach Erik Spoelstra really loves is hiding his ninth-best player in the starting lineup rather than moving up one of his good bench players.

He also done this tactic with other players. Most notably, Spoelstra did it 11 times with Kevin Love in last year's postseason, after doing it seven times with Love in the tail end of the regular season.

Nikola Jović has 16 starts this season in which he's played less than 20 minutes; I'm guessing we'll see No. 17 tonight in Philly.

PHILADELPHIA — Joel Embiid is officially playing tonight. He was listed as questionable because of that left knee, though the expectation was that he would play.

The Sixers usually make the definitive call a little before game time. Embiid finished his usual pregame workout not too long ago and spent part of it fidgeting with the brace on his left knee. He unstrapped it for the last few minutes of his workout and went through his moves with his left tight pulled up and the black brace showing and untethered in the back. We'll see how that affects him, if at all, tonight against the Heat.

Jaime Jaquez Jr. credits his father with helping to form much of his perspective on life and basketball. But to this day, Jaquez Jr. can distill all the wisdom his dad passed down to him to a single command he and his teammates heard repeatedly during their strenuous practice sessions.

"Run," he said with a smile.

The elder Jaquez made them run so that when they faced more talented teams, "we would run them out of the gym." He viewed Riley as a "mastermind" and made sure to channel Riley's maniacal focus to his son and their team. But his real goal was to see how each player responded when pushed beyond their limits.

Most faded as the drills and practices intensified, but Jaquez Jr. kept asking for more. And more. And more. It soon became clear to Jaquez Sr. that his efforts to push his son to his physical limits only fed an unquenchable thirst for improvement.

"He didn't just love the game. He loved the work. He loved the process of getting better," Jaquez Sr. told The Athletic.

So what was Jaquez Jr.'s breaking point? By the time he reached high school, it went beyond even what his dad thought. Each day, the younger Jaquez would arrive at school at 6 a.m. to put in extra work before the day started. He then practiced with the varsity team after school later in the day. After a while, he'd even sneak in some late-night workouts when he felt like there was more to accomplish.

That was when Jaquez Sr. had to step in. He approved the extra work, but had just one request: At least eat dinner before going back to the gym.

Jaquez Jr's response? "You don't want me to be great?" he'd say playfully.

He didn't know it at the time, but Jaquez Jr. was already adopting one of the fundamental principles of Miami Heat Culture: greatness requires a mental edge acquired only through relentless work and accountability. It's only fitting that Jaquez Jr. and the Heat not only found each other years later, but also discovered they were a perfect match along the way.

Read the rest of my March 26 profile here.

Languishing in seventh place in the Eastern Conference after losing reigning MVP Joel Embiid for half the season, the Sixers might be in the weirdest place of any team in the league right now.

On the one hand, Philly has Embiid plus another All-Star in Tyrese Maxey and max cap room coming online this summer. Embiid is back in the lineup, and the team is 30-7 when he and Maxey both play. The ingredients are there to follow a deep playoff run behind those two with an even better squad next year.

On the other hand, that endgame requires threading a pretty fine needle, starting with using cap space to get a big star when stars of that ilk rarely change teams via free agency anymore. And in the meantime, there’s the little matter of Philly being the seventh seed in the East. It is theoretically possible the Sixers could only play two postseason games and then head into summer. Stack that up with a bear free-agent market, and it's not hard to see how the dominoes could fall into an unhappy superstar.

Of course, the Sixers are in this spot mostly because that same superstar wasn't available for half the year. Embiid's injury is a bummer not just because of how it impacted Philly's seeding, but also because he was having a season for the ages, posting a mind-boggling 34.1 PER in the 37 games he's played, a mark that would have shattered the season record had he played enough minutes. Embiid’s insane 39.6 usage came with elite efficiency (64.4 percent true shooting) and enough dimes to rank third among centers in assist rate.

The good news for the Sixers is Embiid is back. The bad news is he's not back, if you know what I mean.

Read the rest of my April 9 story here.