3 Games We Can’t Wait to See Next Season for the Miami Heat

Here are 3 nights that will be must-watch

March 31, 2025, Washington, DC, USA: The Miami Heat's Bam Adebayo (13) attempts a layup after getting past Washington Wizards center Alex Sarr (left). | Associated Press Photos

The NBA hasn’t released next season’s schedule, but that’s fine, because the league’s format does us a favor. Miami plays every team at least twice. Which means the games I’m about to describe are guaranteed to happen. The only thing we don’t know yet is the date. And after the summer this franchise just had, there are 3 nights I’ve already got circled in my head.

Miami at Milwaukee

This is the one. This is the game that’s going to break the internet.

Giannis Antetokounmpo spent 13 years in Milwaukee. He was drafted there as a skinny teenager whose name nobody could pronounce, and grew into a two-time MVP there. He won a championship there while also becaming the most beloved athlete in the history of that city. Then he got traded to Miami in June, and the whole thing ended the way these things always end — suddenly. Now he goes back. The moment he walks onto that floor, before a single possession is played, is going to be one of the more emotional scenes we get all season. Fiserv Forum is going to lose its mind, and I think it’ll be nothing but love and appreciation for one of the most beloved athletes in the NBA.

But there’s a second layer to this game that makes it even better, and it’s the part I’m actually more curious about. Miami didn’t get Giannis for free. Tyler Herro , Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr and Kasparas Jakučionis are all Bucks now. Bobby Portis, a Milwaukee folk hero in his own right, is in a Heat uniform as well. So this will be a homecoming and a reunion in both directions. Herro will be trying to prove something against the only organization he’d ever known. As will other former members of the Miami Heat. And Giannis will be standing across from the young players his own trade created.

I don’t know how the game itself will go. I have a feeling that Milwaukke will play inspired basketball and maybe even come out on top that first Milwaukee home game. I do know I’m not missing a second of it, especially that first Tyler Herro/Bam Adebayo pick-and-roll switch. Its been heavily reported how poorly things ended between those two after Tyler had some negative things to say about Bam on social media.

Details for @SportsCenter on the Bam Adebayo-Tyler Herro altercation at a Las Vegas hotel gym: pic.twitter.com/iR4PxYMk1v

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 10, 2026

Philadelphia at Miami

Everybody in South Florida spent a chunk of this summer imagining LeBron James back in a Heat uniform. It was a real conversation and Miami was in the mix. The fit made sense on paper, then he signed with Philadelphia, and that was that.

So now he comes back to the building where he learned how to win. Whatever your feelings about how 2010 through 2014 ended, the fact remains that LeBron’s 4 years in Miami produced 2 championships and 4 straight Finals trips, and that period fundamentally changed what this franchise is. The reception he gets is always going to be layered for whatever reason as Miami fans have never been entirely sure whether to cheer him or not. But strip away the sentiment and it’s still a fascinating basketball game.

LeBron at 42, playing the orchestrator role his body has evolved into, on a Philadelphia team that got swept out of the second round by the eventual champions last spring and clearly decided that wasn’t good enough. Against a Heat team built around the exact kind of downhill force he used to be. Two eras of the same archetype, on the same floor, in the building where one of them started.

Something that intrigues me about the Giannis and Bam pairing is waiting to see who each will start off defending each and every night. Sure, in the NBA these days, there will be actions that require switching and players ending up on someone other than their initial assignment. Nonetheless, I can’t wait to see who of the 2 spends a majority of their time defending LeBron and Joel Embiid.

Fadeaway World

Miami vs. New York

The Knicks are the champions. They swept Cleveland in the conference finals, beat San Antonio in 5, and Jalen Brunson put up 45 in the closeout game to take Finals MVP. First title in New York in 53 years. Whether you believe that their run is repeatable or not, they’re currently the standard in an Eastern Conference that Miami wants to recapture for the first time since 2023.

If this Heat team is what I think it can be, the road to June runs through Madison Square Garden at some point. And the regular-season meetings are where you start collecting information about whether that’s realistic.

I’ll be watching one thing above all: what happens when Miami’s defensive architecture meets Brunson. Everything the Heat built this summer along with what was already in place like Davion Mitchell picking up at the point of attack, Pelle Larsson and Andrew Wiggins’ physicality on the wing, Bam Adebayo and Giannis erasing everything behind them is designed to make elite guard play uncomfortable. Brunson is the single hardest test of that design in the Eastern Conference, because he doesn’t need space or speed to beat you.

That matchup, 4 times a year, is going to tell us more about Miami’s ceiling than probably any other eastern conference game on the calendar.

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There are others I could have listed. Cleveland is still Cleveland. San Antonio and Victor Wembanyama coming to Kaseya is appointment viewing on its own. Other matchups against an always tough OKC, Indiana with a healthy Halliburton and Toronto with Kawhi (maybe?) will be a brawl with how good both teams will be defensively.

But those three matchups stick out to me and could be what define where this team actually is. Give me the schedule Mr. Silver, I’ll have those dates open.