Heat trimmed rotation to nine and changed starting lineup. It didn’t matter in loss to Clippers
Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 111-99 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers (26-22) on Wednesday at AmericanAirlines Arena.
1. With the Clippers playing on the road on the second night of a back-to-back set and their third game in four nights, the Heat (22-24) entered the matchup with an advantage it just couldn’t take advantage of.
Instead, Los Angeles looked like the fresher team down the stretch as it outscored Miami 57-45 over the final two quarters to turn a halftime tie into a 12-point win. The Heat struggled on both ends of the floor, making 43.6 percent of its shots and committing eight turnovers while the Clippers shot 56.4 percent in the second half.
“They stepped up their defense, they flattened us out. But that’s what good teams will do,” coach Erik Spoelstra said of the Heat’s second-half struggles against the Clippers. “Then we had breakdown after breakdown defensively. Whether we were in our normal man pick-and-roll coverage or whether we were in zone, and you have to give them credit. They made the necessary plays to break us down like that.
“But it seemed like every possession somebody was unable to sustain doing what they were supposed to do. And they made us pay the price for that.”
Even when it came to effort plays, the Clippers had the edge. Los Angeles ended the night with a 21-9 edge in second-change points.
“We had been doing it so well for about five or six weeks,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat averaging the fifth-most second-chance points in the NBA this season (14.8 per game). “We really owned that part of the game of finishing plays and winning the rebounding battles every night. Tonight we burned a lot of calories on some of these possessions until the end of the clock and then we would cough up an offensive rebound, that could be somewhat obviously deflating.”
The good news for the Heat is games against the struggling Cavaliers and Knicks are up next. The bad news is eight of the Heat’s next 11 games come on the road.
Miami has now lost six of its last nine and dropped to eighth in the Eastern Conference standings, with the Hornets passing the Heat for the seventh spot after a victory over the Grizzlies on Wednesday.
2. The Heat made a much-needed change to its starting lineup, but the rotation continues to be in a state of flux.
The starting five of Hassan Whiteside, James Johnson, Rodney McGruder, Justise Winslow and Josh Richardson had struggled recently, with the group outscored by 36 points in 107 minutes over the Heat’s previous 10 games.
So Spoelstra changed things up, replacing McGruder with Tyler Johnson.
It marked the second game this season Miami has used the starting lineup of Whiteside, James Johnson, McGruder, Winslow and Tyler Johnson, with the other time coming in a road win over the Magic on Dec. 23.
Spoelstra’s change yielded positive results after poor starts had turned into an issue recently. There was no slow start Wednesday, as the Heat outscored the Clippers 18-16 over the first 7:09 of the game before making its first substitution.
When the game was done, the Heat’s starting five outscored the Clippers 26-24 in 12 minutes together.
“The toughest part about it is I don’t want anybody to view this as Rodney is any part of the reason for it,” Spoelstra said. “Sometimes when I’m in this position, I just have to make decisions of what I think will be best for the team. Sometimes it’s just a chemistry flow rhythm thing with a group. It’s too early to tell whether this change will be good. But at least the start of the game was much better. Even in the third quarter, I thought we were playing good enough basketball.”
The switch in the starting lineup had a trickle-down effect on the rest of the Heat’s roster. McGruder went from starting to not playing at all, as he was a healthy scratch Wednesday for the first time this season.
The Heat tightened its rotation to nine against the Clippers after using 11 players in recent games. Along with McGruder, Kelly Olynyk, Wayne Ellington and Udonis Haslem were healthy scratches.
When asked if using a nine-man rotation was pre-planned or just the way things unfolded during the game, Spoelstra said: “A little bit of both. I’m open to that. I’m trying to stabilize as much as possible particularly because we’ve had some changes the last few weeks.”
Olynyk received a DNP-coach’s decision (did not play, coach’s decision) for the second consecutive game and has played just four minutes over the Heat’s past three games. Meanwhile, Ellington has been a healthy scratch in 12 of the Heat’s past 14 games.
In other words, the Heat’s ever-changing rotation continues to ... change. Goran Dragic’s return from knee injury looms, too, with his comeback expected in mid-February.
“We need more. We need to see. We’ve only had one game of it, so I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Heat guard Dwyane Wade said when asked for his thoughts on the nine-man look. “Obviously, there’s guys who work hard to be on the court that’s not out there, so it’s tough. It’s tough at this time to see teammates not getting an opportunity to play, but also you understand you want to get to a shorter rotation, and be able to get some kind of rhythm and kind of continuity with groups, so we’ll see. “
3. Whiteside’s struggles at the foul line continue to be a thing. The Heat’s starting center made two free throws Wednesday and ended a string of 14 consecutive misses from the charity stripe, but he was still just 2 of 5 from the foul line against the Clippers.
Despite working diligently at it after practice and sometimes even after games, Whiteside is last in the league in free-throw shooting among those who have attempted at least 50 free throws at 42 percent (68 of 162). It’s a big reason why the Heat owns the league’s worst team free-throw percentage at 68.5 percent.
4. Dion Waiters’ playing time is getting more consistent, but his up-and-down play continues.
After totaling 39 points on 17-of-29 shooting (58.6 percent) in 48 minutes over the previous two games, Waiters wasn’t as sharp Wednesday with nine points on 3-of-9 shooting and three assists in a season-high 29 minutes.
Waiters, who missed the first 35 games of the season because of ankle surgery he underwent last January, is still being used in a bench role. But the Heat guard’s minutes are slowly increasing after he was fined last week for publicly venting about his lack of playing time.
While he’s averaging just 18.1 minutes of court time in nine games since he returned, he’s played an average of 25.7 minutes over the past three games. That’s a positive sign as Spoelstra works Waiters back into the rotation after a year-long absence.
5. The Heat didn’t have much of an answer for Clippers forward Tobias Harris, as he helped make it a bad defensive night for Miami. Harris finished with 31 points on 12-of-19 shooting and six assists on Wednesday, bouncing back from a 1-of-9 performance in Tuesday’s loss to the Mavericks.
“He was knocking down the shots that we’re willing to give a lot of teams and a lot of players,” Heat point guard Justise Winslow said of Harris. “With that being said, hats off to him. We tried to adjust, we tried to blitz, we tried a number of things, and he just did a great job of attacking and knocking down that pull-up.”
Powered by Harris’ performance, the Clippers shot an efficient 52.9 percent against the Heat’s usually solid defense. Miami still owns the league’s sixth-best defensive rating for the season, but it hasn’t looked like a top-10 defense during this current 3-6 stretch.
This story was originally published January 23, 2019 at 10:07 PM.
