Here’s how defense and Dwyane Wade led the Heat to a much-needed win over the Hornets
Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 93-75 win over the Charlotte Hornets (31-38) on Sunday at AmericanAirlines Arena.
1. During coach Erik Spoelstra’s pregame media session just two hours before tip-off, he classified Dwyane Wade as doubtful because of a bruised right hip. A few hours later, Wade helped lead the Heat (33-36) to a win over the Hornets.
“He’s a warrior,” Spoelstra said. “He knows how important a game like this is. Just the fact that he wasn’t able to go through the walk through. But then he does everything he possibly can. He texts me after my media session and says, ‘Coach, I can give you a couple minutes and we’ll see from there.’ And it’s really just to set the tone for the team.”
Miami entered the fourth quarter with a one-point lead, but Wade helped blow the game open with 12 fourth-quarter points on 4-of-8 shooting from the field and 2-of-2 shooting on threes. The Heat outscored Charlotte 32-15 in the period.
Wade finished with 17 points and eight rebounds in 28 minutes.
“After the fall I took the other day and a quick turnaround with a 1 p.m. game, I really didn’t have it from that standpoint,” Wade said. “But just looking at the guys’ faces and you understand everybody feels a certain way this time of the year. If I could give us anything, I just told coach, ‘I don’t know what I got, but I’ll give you what I can.’ Then the game started happening and the competitive nature took over and you’re able to do a little bit more.”
Wade credited a conversation with Heat center Hassan Whiteside for his decision to play through the pain Sunday.
“Hassan said ‘D, just give us two minutes.’ I thought that was hilarious,” Wade said. “I remember having to go to Hassan a lot of times early when he first got here and be like ‘Yo, big fella, just give us what you got.’ So when he came to me and said ‘Yo, D, just give us two minutes,’ I just started laughing. I said ‘Coach, I’m going to give it what I got. Hassan came up to me, I got to play.’”
Wade’s fourth-quarter heroics are nothing new even in his final NBA season, as he owns a team-high usage rate (an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while on the court) of 27.8 percent. He’s also averaging 4.2 points on a team-high 3.9 shot attempts per game in the fourth quarter this season.
But Wade had some help in the final period this time. Fellow reserve guard Goran Dragic contributed 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting and three assists in the fourth.
“It’s also great that the last five minutes, [Wade] didn’t have to shoulder the whole burden,” Spoelstra said. “At that point, Goran really got into a great rhythm and took some of those responsibilities to attack and create a trigger for us off his plate.”
2. The Heat’s defense was phenomenal in its win over the Hornets, especially against All-Star guard Kemba Walker.
Miami limited Charlotte to season-lows in points (75) and shooting percentage (31.3), and trapped Walker repeatedly to hold him to 10 points on 4-of-16 shooting and four assists.
“It’s been something the guys have really been working on,” Spoelstra said of Miami’s trapping defense. “We’ve had a lot of room for improvement over the course of the season, but there’s something in the last few weeks where it’s been much more discipline, much more coherent, guys on the same page. It just takes reps, time, battle tested equals trust, and that’s what was needed tonight.
“Then guys just had to make plays, too. Once the ball gets out of his hands, they have a ton of three-point shooting. You had to cover ground. It helps when you have the mobility of the bigs that we had tonight. Bam [Adebayo] and [Hassan Whiteside], [James Johnson], [Derrick Jones Jr.] were covering a lot of ground.”
The last time the Heat held an opponent to 31.3 percent shooting or lower was in a Dec. 7, 2013 win over the Timberwolves, when Minnesota shot 29.3 percent from the field.
Sunday’s Heat defensive performance was a big reason why the contest was the lowest scoring game in the NBA this season, with the teams combining for 168 points. The previous season-low total for a game was 170 points.
The Heat’s trapping scheme against Walker has really worked, as he’s averaged 15 points on 27.3 percent shooting in his past two games against Miami.
“They do a great job making sure that I get rid of the basketball,” Walker said of the Heat.
With Walker unable to get much going offensively, Charlotte ended up shooting 7 of 36 on threes.
The Heat has remained among the top 10 in defensive rating for most of the season. Miami currently has the league’s seventh-best defensive rating, allowing 107.1 points per 100 possessions.
The Heat is 19-3 this season when keeping its opponent under 100 points.
3. James Johnson ended his string of seven consecutive DNP-CDs on Sunday and provided a boost off the bench against the Hornets.
In his first game action since a Feb. 21 loss to the 76ers — Miami’s first game after the All-Star break — Johnson finished with six points on 2-of-4 shooting, three rebounds and three assists in 17 minutes against the Hornets. He recorded all of his stats while playing the entire fourth quarter.
Before Sunday’s contest, Johnson had not played in 11 consecutive games (the first four because of a shoulder injury and the last seven as an active scratch). But Justise Winslow’s absence due to a right thigh bruise helped make room for Johnson in Miami’s rotation.
“He’s been able to stay ready. It’s not easy,” Spoelstra said. “That, I do have great empathy for. A player who was in the rotation and then things changed. But he worked.
“There was a practice a couple days ago that I texted him afterward and said that I really appreciated all the work he’s putting in behind the scenes when no one was watching. That doesn’t guarantee anything. He didn’t play the next game. But you notice these things and we needed him tonight. He stepped in and gave us phenomenal minutes, particularly defensively.”
Johnson, who is in the second season of a four-year, $60 million contract, is averaging 7.8 points on 43 percent shooting, 3.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 42 games this season. He’s made 33 starts, with his last start coming in a Feb. 2 loss to the Pacers.
4. With Winslow unavailable to play, the Heat used its 24th starting lineup of the season Sunday. That’s already the third-most starting lineups Miami has used in a single season since the start of 2008-09.
Derrick Jones Jr. started in Winslow’s place, making Josh Richardson and Dion Waiters the primary ball-handlers in the new starting group. Jones finished with six points and five rebounds in 24 minutes in his sixth start of the season.
Richardson really struggled Sunday, though. He scored seven on 2-of-17 shooting from the field and 0-of-9 shooting on threes. It marked Richardson’s worst shooting performance of his career from the field and three-point range.
Still, Richardson played 38 minutes and finished with a plus-minus of plus-18.
5. The Heat remains in the Eastern Conference’s eighth and final playoff spot.
With the victory, the No. 8 Heat is one game ahead of the No. 9 Magic and pushed its lead over the No. 10 Hornets to two games.
Now, Miami hits the road to complete the back-to-back set. The Heat begins a four-game trip with a Monday matchup against the Thunder in Oklahoma City, with All-Star guard Russell Westbrook suspended for the game after receiving his 16th technical foul of the season during Saturday’s loss to the Warriors.
With 13 games remaining on the Heat’s regular-season schedule, nine come on the road.
“It’s an opportunity to take on all challenges on the road,” Spoelstra said. “What a great time. I think Dwyane mentioned it. If you’re a true competitor, you love this. You love these big challenges. You love going out on the road where everybody is counting you out. There is nobody else but us and opportunity. You got to love it.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2019 at 5:39 PM.
