Miami Heat should feel slighted by lack of nationally-televised games

If the Heat needed any extra motivation heading into the 2022-23 season, the NBA’s newly released TV schedule should provide some, Ira Winderman writes for The Sun Sentinel.

As Winderman outlines, despite making it to within one game of the NBA Finals last season, Miami will make just 11 appearances on TNT, ESPN, and ABC in ’22-23. By comparison, the Lakers, who missed the play-in tournament, will have 27 such games; the Sixers, whom the Heat defeated in the second round of the postseason, will have 23.

The Heat are also the only one of the NBA’s eight teams that made the conference semifinals last season that won’t be in action on Christmas Day, Winderman observes within his breakdown of the club’s schedule.

Here’s more out of Miami:

• Could Jimmy Butler emerge as the Heat’s go-to option at power forward following the free agent departure of P.J. Tucker? Winderman explores that subject in a Sun Sentinel mailbag, noting that it could work in certain matchups and would help unlock the team’s perimeter potential, as long as Butler is comfortable with it.
• While things could change between now and the October 17 deadline, the Heat are showing no urgency at this point to get a rookie scale extension done with Tyler Herro, Winderman says in another Sun Sentinel article. As we explained on Wednesday, extending Herro would activate the “poison pill provision,” which would make it extremely difficult to trade him during the 2022/23 league year. As Winderman writes, not extending Herro this offseason would leave in-season trade options open and would put the Heat in position to re-sign him as a restricted free agent next summer if he remains on the roster.
• Be sure to check out our Miami Heat page for all the latest updates on the team, including Udonis Haslem continuing to weigh his decision for 2022/23 and the Heat and Spurs being scheduled to play a game in Mexico City in December.