Thunder vs Heat preview: OKC looks to earn its buy-in to playoffs with a win over Miami

Oklahoma City Thunder vs Miami Heat

Time: 6:30PM CST

Location: American Airlines Arena, Miami

Broadcast: FSOK

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The Thunder are in Miami tonight to play the first of their last two games of the season. The challenge is simple: win, and they’re in. Lose tonight and OKC still has one last chance, and that game is against the lottery-bound Grizzlies, but bad things happen when you tempt fate like that. Ideally OKC sees tonight’s game as a must-win.

To put it plainly (if obtusely), the Thunder have a bad habit of doing the thing, but then doing the other thing, a thing we’ve seen many times this season. So there are no guarantees that we’ll once again get to enjoy Russell Westbrook, Paul George, Carmelo Anthony, and the remaining cast play good defense without switching every dang time. But we can hope, though hope has not been a fair maiden to us so far this season.

And then there’s Miami. They too are fighting for playoff position against a few other teams, as they are neck and neck with the Bucks and Wizards. The question is, which team would they prefer to play? The Raptors are the best, the Celtics are the most dogged and resilient, and the 76ers are the hottest in the East. I’m too lazy to figure out all the tiebreakers, so let’s just assume that Miami is going to try and win this game.

Which Thunder team will show up tonight? The one that shut down the Rockets, or the one that would happily roll the dice on the final game of the season?