Takeaways from Heat loss to Wizards, where Miami was ‘completely destroyed on both ends’
.JPG "Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra reacts to a foul on his team during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Washington Wizards, Monday, Dec. 30, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)")
The Miami Heat suffered perhaps its worst loss of the season Monday. In both teams’ final game of 2019, the Washington Wizards blew out the Heat, 123-105, on the backs of Jordan McRae, Garrison Mathews and Ian Mahinmi.
Here are five takeaways from Miami’s first stunning loss of the season:
1. Heat finally no-shows against a bad team.
The Heat built the Eastern Conference’s second best record entering Monday mostly by taking care of business against the conference’s dregs. Miami didn’t lose to a sub-.500 team until Dec. 16 against the Memphis Grizzlies. Now the Heat is 11-2 against teams with losing record after its blowout loss in Washington.
“It felt like everyone walked into this game lackadaisical, including me,” star post player Bam Adebayo said.
This one was particularly bizarre. The Heat (22-9) entered Monday on a five-game winning streak, which included victories against the Indiana Pacers and Utah Jazzz, and two wins against the Philadelphia 76ers. As the calendar came to a close, the winning streak helped establish Miami as a legitimately elite team.
The Wizards’ roster was even worse than their record was suggest. Star shooting guard Bradley Beal was out for the second straight game. Rookie forward Rui Hachimura missed his seventh straight game. Sharpshooting post player Davis Bertans was out for the fourth game in a row. Five of Washington’s top eight rotation players sat out for a variety of injuries. The scoring burden was carried by McRae, Mathews and Mahinmi, and the latter two aren’t even always regular members of the Wizards’ rotation.
Mahinmi, a center with one of the worst contracts in the league, scored a career-high 25 points — his previous high since joining Washington in 2016 was 17. McRae, a guard on the fringe of the Wizards’ rotation, scored a season-high 29. Mathews, a shooting guard on a two-way contract, scored 28 to best his previous career high of six. Those three combined to score 61 points in the first half and send Washington (10-22) into the break with a 71-63 lead. The Wizards never trailed in the second half.
“A lot of players were missing from this game. It was a trap game,” guard Goran Dragic said. “If you want to be the top team in the East, we need to know that every night you need to bring it and we didn’t do that tonight, and it’s a good lesson for this group and hopefully we’re going to fix that.”
2. The Heat’s defense is still a problem.
Miami has known for weeks its defense isn’t where it wants to be. Star wing Jimmy Butler called out himself and his teammates after the loss to the Grizzlies. Coach Erik Spoelstra has harped on the team’s vanishing defensive identity over and over again throughout December. The Heat entered Monday ranked just No. 17 in defensive efficiency in December and Washington became the latest team to dismantle Miami at Capital One Arena.
In the first quarter, Mahinmi dominated the Heat, scoring 14 points in the opening period alone and the Wizards shot 60 percent from the field in the opening period.
The second quarter was even better. Mathews exploded for 20 points in the period, and Washington shot 63.6 percent from the field and made five three-pointers. The Wizards went into halftime shooting 61.9 percent from the floor and 56.2 percent from three-point range.
“To me, it just shows we’re not there yet. We’re not as good of a team as we think we are,” Butler said. “Like I’ve always said, we have so much more to learn and so much more to get better at, but we’ve got a long way to go. There’s still a lot of season left, but we’ll figure it out. We’ll definitely figure it out.”
Washington finished shooting 51.2 percent from the field and 45.9 percent on threes. They dished out 26 assists and committed only nine turnovers. They even had nine offensive rebounds. The Wizards bested the Heat in every box score category except free-throw shooting, offensive and defensive rebounds, and total fouls.
‘We were completely destroyed on both ends,” Dragic said. “Our offense was not there. Our defense was not even slightly there and it was tough.”
3. The turnover problem returned.
For the first time since its 27-point loss to the 76ers last month in Philadelphia, the Heat logged at least as many turnovers as it did assists. It’s the obvious trend for a team which thrives on ball movement, although it’s a bit of a chicken-or-egg predicament. Regardless, the assist to turnover ratio slipping to 1.00 or worse means the offense is failing.
Miami ultimately finished with 18 assists and 18 turnovers. The Heat had six blocked shots and those empty possessions turned into 18 fast-break points for Washington.
The Wizards have a potent offense, even when ravaged by injuries, but they’ve been one of the worst defensive teams in the league. Still, the Heat had its fifth lowest scoring game of the season and its worst since scoring just 93 in a blowout loss to the Boston Celtics on Dec. 4.
“Tonight our offense wasn’t able to bail ourselves out,” Spoelstra said. “We had far too many turnovers and empty possessions, and even when we didn’t have turnovers our offense wasn’t necessarily in our normal flow. And we would’ve really needed to bank on one of our better defensive games and we didn’t bring that to the table.”
4. Butler’s free-throw shooting was pretty much it on offense.
The Heat briefly threatened to make the end of the game competitive with one burst late in the fourth quarter. The Wizards’ lead stretched all the way to 18 after Miami managed just one field goal in the first 8:28 of the third quarter. Finally, the Heat got hot in the final four minutes of the quarter, though, and ripped off a 12-0 run to go into the fourth trailing 90-81.
It was the lone instance when someone other than Butler showed up. Rookie wing Tyler Herro scored five in the miniature barrage. Small forward Derrick Jones Jr. and post player Meyers Leonard both made field goals.
Otherwise, the Heat’s offense was almost entirely reliant on Butler’s ability to get to the free throw line. For the third straight game, the four-time All-Star had double-digit free-throw attempts and more than half of his team-high 27 points came by going 15 of 19 from the line. Only one of his teammates — sharpshooting swingman Duncan Robinson, who finished with 16 — had more total points than Butler had at the free-throw line alone.
5. A rare slip by Adebayo.
Although he finished with 14 points and 14 rebounds for another double-double, Adebayo wasn’t his usual dominant self. He had five assists, but those were counteracted by six turnovers. He was a game-worst minus-23. His 6-of-11 shooting performance was worse than his season average, too.
As the anchor of Miami’s defense, he wasn’t his usual self either. He didn’t block a single shot or grab a single steal and he committed four fouls. Mahinmi scored 25 points and Washington went 23 of 35 in the paint. He’s likely headed toward his first trip to the All-Star Game this season, which means even an easy double-double isn’t what he expects from himself.
“We’ve got another game in three days and that’s the time to execute, and really get back to our habits and that’s what we need right now,” Adebayo said. “We need to get back to our habits. We’ve been slacking on our habits a lot and it costed us again.”
