Heat players react to Iguodala acquisition after loss: ‘Pat Riley is obsessed with winning.’
The start of the Miami Heat’s five-game West Coast trip was supposed to be about its matchup against Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and the Los Angeles Clippers.
But with details surrounding the Heat’s trade for Andre Iguodala surfacing just hours before tip-off, there were certainly distractions entering the game.
The Heat (34-16) couldn’t overcome those distractions and a shorthanded roster in a 128-111 loss to the Clippers (36-15) on Wednesday at Staples Center. Miami fell to 12-13 on the road.
Miami led by as many as 12 points in the first half and entered halftime with a three-point lead. But the Clippers outscored the Heat 37-22 in the third quarter to take control of the game on their way to the victory.
“You’re used to a lot of change in this league,” coach Erik Spoelstra said when asked about the trade distractions surrounding the Heat entering Wednesday’s game. “It doesn’t take away from the human side of it. But our group was focused on the task at hand. It didn’t affect anything that happened in between those four lines. What affected us more than anything was the team on the other end. They played great in that second half.”
A strained right shoulder forced Heat wing Jimmy Butler to exit Wednesday’s game in the third quarter. He did not return.
In the loss, Heat forward Derrick Jones Jr. put together one of the best offensive performances of his NBA career. He scored a career-high 25 points on 10-of-12 shooting, to go with nine rebounds and three assists.
The Clippers won behind a historic shooting performance. Los Angeles shot 24 of 54 on threes, setting a new franchise record for three-pointers made in a game and it also marked the most three-pointers the Heat has ever allowed in a game in its franchise history.
Landry Shamet (23 points) and George (23 points) combined to make 11 threes in the Clippers’ win.
“It was a deluge, an avalanche in that second half of threes,” Spoelstra said. “We just couldn’t get a handle on it, whether it was man or zone. It was one of the better three-point shooting displays that I’ve been on the other end of.”
The Heat’s five-game trip continues Friday with a matchup against the Sacramento Kings.
Here are five takeaways from the Heat’s loss to the Clippers ...
1. With the Heat’s trade to land Iguodala and possibly Danilo Gallinari still being worked out, forward James Johnson and guard Dion Waiters were not on the Staples Center court for pregame warmups and were not on the bench for the game.
With the Heat finalizing a trade that would send Justise Winslow and at least one other player to the Memphis Grizzlies for Iguodala, Johnson and Waiters were the only two available players who were held out Wednesday. Johnson’s camp was under the impression late Wednesday night that he would very likely being traded by the Heat, a league source told the Miami Herald.
Spoelstra declined to comment after the game when asked about Johnson and Waiters being left in the locker room. The Staples Center lockers of Johnson and Waiters were completely cleaned out after Wednesday’s game, and they were not in the Heat locker room.
What does Iguodala bring to the Heat?
“Winning,” Butler said. “He knows how to do that on both sides of the ball. He’s super smart. There’s nothing that he can’t do. Everybody else gets to learn from him.
“We have him who has won [the NBA championship] multiple times, we have [Udonis Haslem] who has won it multiple times. They know what it takes to get there. Not only get there, but to win it. So, myself and everybody else around this locker room, its somebody else we can lean on.”
According to ESPN, the Heat has also been working to also acquire Gallinari from the Oklahoma City Thunder and it could turn into a larger three-team deal between the Heat, Grizzlies and Thunder. The objective is to add both players in deals before Thursday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline.
With the Heat just $12,330 below the $138.9 million hard cap that was triggered by the sign-and-trade acquisition of Butler this past summer, Miami can’t take on more than $12,330 in salary in any move than the amount it trades away this season.
To acquire both Iguodala ($17.2 million salary this season) and Gallinari ($22.6 million), the Heat would need to send out at least $39.8 million in salary. Winslow is due $13 million this season, so the Heat needs to trade away additional salary to make the deal work.
A side note: Iguodala agreed to a two-year, $30 million extension with the Heat as part of the trade, but the 2021-22 season is a team option, according to ESPN. That allows Miami to maintain substantial cap space to try to sign a star free agent that 2021 offseason.
“They want to win now,” Butler said of the Heat’s front office. “That’s what I was told and that’s what they’re doing. I think they know what everybody is capable of in this locker room, myself included. And we’re ready to go to war. We know that we can compete with the best of them. So moving forward, that’s what we’re expected to continue to do.”
Center Bam Adebayo echoed Butler’s thoughts on the Heat’s moves in advance of the deadline.
“Pat [Riley] is obsessed with winning,” Adebayo said . “You can’t be mad at that. We all have that DNA here. At the end of the day, he has to make big decisions. He’s doing that right now to get us a championship.”
2. After scoring a season-high 38-points in Monday’s win over the 76ers, Butler was back to his facilitating ways. But he exited Wednesday’s game in the third quarter with a strained right shoulder and did not return.
Butler finished with a season-low two assists Monday while scoring 38 on 14-of-20 shooting. On Wednesday in Los Angeles, Butler turned in his usual solid all-around solid stat line with 11 points, five rebounds and seven assists in 26 minutes before leaving the game because of a shoulder injury.
Butler entered Wednesday averaging a career-high 6.2 assists this season.
As for the shoulder injury, Spoelstra mentioned the possibility of a Thursday MRI. According to a league source, the injury isn’t considered to be serious and the plan is to see how Butler’s shoulder feels Thursday morning before making a decision to move forward on the MRI.
“I’m just hoping it ain’t nothing major,” Butler said. “I want to be out there going to war with my guys. I’ll pray about it that’s it’s nothing major.”
3. One of the things that drew the Heat to guard Gabe Vincent was his ability to shoot threes. That skill was on display Wednesday.
With Waiters and Johnson held out, Vincent was called on to play his first meaningful NBA minutes. Vincent, a rookie who signed a two-way contract with the Heat on Jan. 8, showed off his shooting ability with nine points on 3-of-9 shooting on threes in 17 minutes against the Clippers.
Vincent made three of his five threes in an impressive first half.
“I feel like I’ve know him for the last six weeks just by getting daily reports from [Eric Glass] and watching a bunch of film before we found him,” Spoelstra said. “He definitely can fit. He helps a lot of the actions that we run, they run them in Sioux Falls obviously. He looks good on those actions on the run. He has range, but he can shoot on the move. He’s a capable detailed defender.”
Vincent had played just one NBA minute entering Wednesday, and it came in the final minute of the Heat’s blowout win over the Orlando Magic on Jan. 27.
Vincent’s outside shooting shouldn’t come as a surprise, though. Undrafted out of UC-Santa Barbara in 2018, Vincent has averaged 21.8 points while shooting 41.6 percent from three-point range on an average 10.1 three-point attempts per game in 26 G League games this season.
4. The Heat continues to limit its turnovers, which is helping its offensive efficiency.
After struggling with high-turnover games earlier this season, the Heat continued its recent trend of low-turnover outings with just nine turnovers against the Clippers. This comes after Miami committed just three turnovers in Monday’s win over the 76ers, setting a new franchise mark for fewest turnovers in a game.
Over the past 15 games, including Wednesday’s game in Los Angeles, the Heat is averaging 11.3 turnovers. Miami entered averaging 15.1 turnovers per game for the season.
It’s no coincidence that the Heat entered Wednesday with the NBA’s second-best offensive rating (scoring 119.1 points per 100 possessions) over the first 14 games of this 15-game stretch.
5. With Tyler Herro (right ankle soreness) and Meyers Leonard (left ankle sprain) unavailable, the Heat stuck with an eight-man rotation for most of the game in Los Angeles. Holding out Johnson and Waiters, and Winslow’s absence didn’t help.
Center Kelly Olynyk got his first start of the season in Leonard’s spot Wednesday. Olynyk finished with seven points and seven rebounds in 22 minutes.
With Leonard set to miss the Heat’s entire five-game trip, Olynyk’s stint in the starting lineup should continue for at least the next week. This isn’t new for Olynyk, who started 58 games in his first two seasons with the Heat.
Also, starting Olynyk next to Adebayo reunited a tandem that has been very successful in the past. The Adebayo-Olynyk duo posted a plus/minus of plus-210 over the previous two seasons, and entered Wednesday as a plus-23 this season.
Wednesday didn’t go well for Adebayo and Olynyk, though. The Heat was outscored by 17 points in the 15 minutes they played together against the Clippers.
This story was originally published February 6, 2020 at 12:28 AM.
