Heat opens Vegas summer league with loss to Pelicans. Here's a handful of takeaways

The Miami Heat opened play in the Las Vegas Summer League Saturday afternoon with an ugly 110-84 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans inside the Cox Pavilion on the UNLV campus.

The Heat, which went 2-1 earlier this week in a trio of summer league games in the California Classic in Sacramento, plays its next game Sunday at 5 p.m. against the Charlotte Hornets.

▪ The Heat gave point guard Derrick Walton Jr. and summer league leading scorer Derrick Jones Jr., last season's two-way contract players, the day off and the rest of the team struggled on both ends.

Summer league coach Eric Glass went with a starting lineup of former Notre Dame point guard Matt Farrell, 2015 Milwaukee Bucks first round pick Rashad Vaughn, Heat G League guard Ike Nwamu, Michigan forward Duncan Robinson and 2017 first round pick Bam Adebayo.

Miami shot only 41.6 percent from the field, 8 of 31 from three-point range and turned it over 16 times leading to 18 points. Defensively, it was even uglier. The Pelicans, who didn’t even have a first round pick on its summer league roster and only one player who was on the NBA roster last season in center Cheick Diallo, shot 58.1 percent.

“Nobody stood out to me tonight,” Glass said. “That was an embarrassing performance and it started with the head coach. “Lack of energy, lack of effort, lack of intensity, connection on the court. It was an embarrassing game. Those kids are trying hard, everyone’s competing out there. That’s on me as a head coach.”

▪ Robinson, who has started every summer league game for the Heat along with Adebayo and is a strong candidate to earn a two-way roster spot with the team, was a bright spot once again.

He finished with 18 points, six rebounds, an assist, a steal and a block and made four three-pointers in 21 minutes. Robinson, 24, averaged 11.3 points per game in the California Class. He’s shooting 61.2 percent (19 of 31) from the field thus far in summer league.

“I feel pretty good,” Robinson said. “A lot of it is just taking good shots. It’s a lot of credit to my teammates finding me in positions to be successful. So I just try to stay aggressive. I get a lot of encouragement from the coaching staff, which is great.”

Robinson, 24, showed us yet again he has more to his game than a good three-point touch. In the first quarter, he drove in for another impressive dunk and then hit a pretty athletic layup in traffic.

“I'm trying to show it on both ends, mix it up and break some labels, stereotypes,” he said.

▪ Adebayo, who shot 34 percent from the field in Sacramento, was 4 of 10 from the field Saturday and finished with nine points, four rebounds, an assist, a steal and a block in 20 minutes.

Although he had a couple of nice alley-oop dunks, Adebayo had a tough time getting clean shots off otherwise and it looked like he was fouled on several attempts, but the calls were not made.

▪ Jarrod Jones, a 6-9, 230-pound big man out of Ball State who has played overseas for the last six seasons, led the Heat in rebounds with 12. He added 15 points on 6 of 15 shooting off the bench.

Jones, 28, played a total of 22 minutes in the California Classic and was 0 for 5 from the field prior to Saturday’s game.

“Just an opportunity I’m trying to take full advantage of,” Jones said. “We got a lot of games out here. Every game you might not get to play but the minutes that we get I just personally want to go out there and play hard and prove to all the teams in the league that I can play at this level.”

▪ Heat guards Josh Richardson and Rodney McGruder sat near the Heat’s bench for Saturday's game and will be in town through the weekend.

▪ Coach Erik Spoelstra watched Saturday’s game from a designated seating area for NBA personnel. Team president Pat Riley is expected to rejoin the team soon. He watched Miami's first two games in Sacramento.

This story was originally published July 7, 2018 at 7:29 PM.