Dave Hyde: Heat lose Adebayo, wild play-in game and now face offseason of needed change

Q: What was the final score of the Miami Heat vs. Charlotte Hornets play-in game?

The Miami Heat lost to the Charlotte Hornets with a final score of 127-126 in overtime.

Q: What injury did Bam Adebayo suffer during the play-in game?

Bam Adebayo suffered a lower back injury early in the play-in game against the Charlotte Hornets.

Q: How did the Miami Heat's season end in the play-in game?

The Miami Heat's season ended in a close overtime loss to the Charlotte Hornets, leaving fans wondering what might have been.

Q: What are the implications of the Heat's loss for the offseason?

The Heat's loss in the play-in game signals a needed change for the offseason as they reevaluate their roster and strategy.

There’s nothing quite like this feeling in sports. You can end your season by getting blown out and everything’s clear. You can end your season on the final play and just shrug.

There’s nothing, though, like having your best player go down to injury early in the final game, competing like crazy and then ending your season in the wildest of finishes and wondering what might have been.

That’s what happened to the Miami Heat in Tuesday night’s play-in loss to the Charlotte Hornets in overtime, 127-126.

Sure, it was a play-in game, and so you can dismiss it outright as a night to nowhere. Maybe so. It’s not like the Heat were going to challenge for anything important this season. All Tuesday’s game would’ve earned them was another play-in game Friday.

But if you watched the game, if you followed the change of leads, if you appreciate great competition in any arena, this felt like Game 7 of a playoff series.

That’s the wonder of sports. Everyone entered dismissing the Heat and the Hornets and, no doubt, will do so again today. It won’t factor at all in this offseason’s decisions to upgrade this Heat team.

But in the moment of this flawed, unsteady Heat team played its hard out. And a young Charlotte team answering right back. It was give and take like that, all the way to the finish when Tyler Herro hit six straight points to give the Heat the lead, Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball drove hard to get the lead back and Davion Mitchell’s frantic shot at the end was blocked.

So, that’s it for the Heat this season. There’s plenty of time to wonder what they do now to upgrade a team that desperately needs upgrading. But Tuesday’s loss brought other wonders in its aftermath.

You wonder, for instance, why the Heat didn’t look more like this in going 5-10 down the finish of the regular season. Where was this team? Where was Andrew Wiggins scoring 27 points?

Or Kel’el Ware have 12 points, 19 rebounds and five blocks?

Mitchell had 28 points, hitting shot after shot in the fourth quarter to bring the Heat back.

But what you wonder before any of that is how Bam Adebayo’s absence changed this night. He’s the centerpiece of this Heat team, the guy who worked out four times a day and has transformed himself into a solid, two-way player.

So early in the second quarter, when he went for a loose ball and ended up falling hard on his backside, everything changed for the Heat when he didn’t return. Charlotte’s Ball wasn’t even called for a foul on the play, too.

A foul? Ball lay on the floor and pulled Adebayo’s foot out from under him, causing the Heat center to land hard on his backside. That should’ve been a flagrant foul. Maybe Ball would’ve been ejected from the game if the referees reviewed it. But because there was a change of possession evidently the play wasn’t reviewable.

Oh, right, I know: This doesn’t matter, because the Heat weren’t going anywhere, anyhow. They were in their fourth-straight season of play-in game and, even if they’d won there was no roadmap to a good finish to the season. So, big deal, right?

You could even say the Heat came out better with a loss if you prefer the cold, hard numbers to the emotion of the game. The Heat will now be in the 13th draft spot, with a 4.8 percent chance of the top pick, or the 12th with a 7.1 percent chance of the top pick.

Or maybe you left Tuesday night with this thought: Herro and Ware, the principal players in a trade for Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, played well in a playoff atmosphere. That has to help now, right?

But this was a game the Heat played up to everything they hoped to be and they left with a loss. Maybe that’s the best explanation for why change is needed.

Or maybe it just says any team losing its best player isn’t going anywhere. Not that the Heat were going anywhere with Adebayo. But on a fun night with a wild finish this limited Heat team needed him to move on to, perhaps, nowhere.

As it was, this team moves into an offseason full of uncomfortable questions.