MIAMI — The previous Miami Heat season ended with the ignominy of Miami being swept from the first round of the playoffs by a combined 122-point margin, an NBA record blowout. The Heat season that ended Tuesday night in Charlotte, N.C., was worse. Didn’t even get that far. Perished in play-in purgatory.

But give Miami this much. The Heat endured a hugely disappointing season, and it was on life-support Tuesday as they were without star Bam Adebayo after he left injured early. They were supposed to lose, and it might have been better that they did — yet the fight in the Heat overcame all of that right up until the last few seconds in a 127-126 overtime loss at the Charlotte Hornets

If there is such thing as an honorable loss, this was for Miami. If a game between 9 and 10 seeds can be thrilling, this was. In an NBA season beset by tanking, by so many teams blatantly trying to lose, here came the antidote as two middling teams played with ferocity as if a championship were at stake, not just a potential No. 8 seed.

It was a heartbreaking defeat. The Prime Video broadcast went blank with technical difficulties for a short time in the final minute or so. The Heat was having its own difficulties around the same time.

Miami had a late lead on a Tyler Herro three-point basket and then three Herro free throws only to see LaMelo Ball ignite the home crowd with cheers on a last-second driving layup.

Miami had the big edge in franchise pedigree and in postseason experience — including advancing from the play-in to the playoffs proper the past three straight seasons. Didn’t matter quite enough this time. It’s the forever lowly Hornets advancing one win from the playoffs while the Heat flew home to begin the latest offseason too soon — out of the playoffs for the first time since 2019.

The Heat’s biggest mistake right now would be to rationalize this with “almost,” to spin it to still believe this roster is good enough in a densely competitive, aggressively improved NBA East.

You could blame Tuesday’s loss on Adebayo going out injured after a fall early in the second quarter after only 11 minutes played. He injured his lower back and did not return. Ball’s hand as he too fell appeared to perhaps inadvertently trip Bam. No foul. No review because a change of possession had already happened. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was irate and said afterward Ball should have been ejected.

But, “I don’t think he did that intentionally,” said former Heat great Udonis Haslem of Ball on the Prime Video broadcast.

I don’t think it was irrefutable that he did, despite Spoelstra claiming a dirty play. Three referees did not see it as a foul. Maybe Heat players didn’t either, or wouldn’t there have been retaliation of some sort?

You could also note, if straining to see the glass half full, that the Heat had a winning record this season, a plus on scoring differential and finished only three games out of the fifth seed.

Or that Miami has a handful of promising young players, not the norm around here.

All true. But don’t do it, Heat. Tenth place is 10th place. The bottom of the play-in round is its own irrefutable verdict.

It wasn’t this loss but this season that tells you why the Heat should try again this summer to acquire disgruntled Giannis Antetokounmpo from Milwaukee — to do something that signals an admission, “We aren’t good enough.”

Miami’s season expiring now may have been a small blessing. Couple of reasons:

First, even if they had won Tuesday, Heat would have faced another must-win as a road underdog Friday at the loser of Wednesday’s Orlando-Philadelphia game. And the eventual survivor of the East play-in tourney winning the No. 8 seed is “rewarded” by facing No. 1 Detroit in the first round of the playoffs proper. (Uh-oh.)

Second, by losing in this elimination game, Miami’s odds of getting a top-four pick in the next NBA draft inched up from 4% to 7%, and even without that luck, Heat’s mid-round draft position will be better by at least three spots. Overriding that, maybe this loss is one more reminder to Heat brass that, no, this roster is not good enough.

The roster rose up big-time when Adebayo went out. Davion Mitchell scored 28 points and Andrew Wiggins 27 and Herro 23. Kel’el Ware had 19 rebounds and five blocks to go with his dozen points.

Yet Miami lost despite Charlotte’s Kon Knueppel and Ball — 1-2 in NBA 3-pointers made this season — shooting a combined 2 for 22 from distance Tuesday. The Hornets found a way. The Heat didn’t quite.

It isn’t just that Miami was the 10th-best regular-season team of 15 in the East, some of which were blatantly tanking. It’s that a few of those better teams were ones that have lately surpassed the Heat ... teams like Atlanta, Orlando ... and Charlotte.

Charlotte has long been a franchise laughingstock, dare say always.

Thirty-six seasons for the Hornets have produced zero NBA championships and zero conference finals. Club last even made the playoffs in 2016 — losing to Miami and Dwyane Wade and Goran Dragic — and last won a playoff series in 2002. This is a franchise historically so putrid not even the G.O.A.T. perfume of Michael Jordan as a majority owner for 13 seasons could lift it from the muck.

For three-time champion Miami, Tuesday was the latest disappointment, a fourth straight season relegated to the play-in tournament where the mediocre teams are like JV squads playing to make the varsity. To the Heat, relegated to the play-in for a fourth straight season is (or should be) an insult.

But for Charlotte this was the biggest game in at least 10 years. For this team the play-in was not purgatory, it was a prize.

While the Hornets move on, the Heat stays stuck there ... in that purgatory.

The Hall of Fame football coach Jimmy Johnson liked to say, “The enemy of great is good.”

That’s the Heat today. Close and almost don’t count.

If you can somehow spin four straight years of play-in tournaments and a 10-seed as anything close to good enough, you’ll never be great again.

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