Heat searching for answers after troubling loss in Cleveland: ‘We’ve got to figure it out’
When asked to explain Monday’s ugly overtime loss to the Cavaliers, Heat guard Goran Dragic attempted to simplify a confusing result.
“They shut us down on offense, and we just didn’t play defense,” Dragic said.
Both things are true, with the Cavaliers rallying from a 22-point third-quarter deficit. But there’s only one side of the court that Heat coaches and players were pointing to as the reason for another road loss — defense.
“It looks and it sounds like a broken record,” coach Erik Spoelstra said, with the Heat returning to Miami to face the Timberwolves on Wednesday to begin a five-game homestand. “Either myself or Bam [Adebayo] or [Udonis Haslem] or whoever, Jimmy [Butler], you want to bring anybody in here and talk after one of these road games, we all sound the same. We have an idea every game on the road what it tends to be: When the shots go dry, do we have the ability to sustain defensively and get enough stops to change the momentum.”
With Monday’s loss, the Heat fell to 13-18 on the road for the season. In its past 15 road games, Miami is 4-11 with losses to these sub-.500 teams: Wizards, Knicks, Kings, Hawks, and Cavaliers.
In the Heat’s latest road slip-up, it allowed the team with the worst record in the Eastern Conference to win the fourth quarter and overtime period by a combined score of 45-20. Heat players were upset following the loss in Cleveland.
“It don’t get no worse than this,” Adebayo said.
“It sucks. It’s frustrating,” Heat guard Kendrick Nunn said. “... You can describe it however you want. It just comes down to not getting stops, as simple as that.”
Yes, the Heat shot just 7 of 29 (24.1%) from the field and 2 of 15 (13.3%) on threes during the fourth quarter and overtime. But it’s the way those shooting struggles affected Miami’s defense that was concerning, as the Cavaliers made 17 of their 30 shots (56.7%) during the fourth quarter and overtime.
“I just feel like the offense should not dictate your defense, and you got to give maximum effort even when shots don’t fall,” forward Jae Crowder said. “I think we got to do a better job of holding each other accountable on the court.”
The Heat played Monday without three key rotation players — Jimmy Butler (personal reasons), Tyler Herro (sore right ankle), and Meyers Leonard (sprained left ankle). Butler missed his second consecutive game, and Herro and Leonard missed their eighth consecutive game, but the Heat didn’t want to use that as an excuse for the loss in Cleveland.
“It’s not about that right now,” Crowder said. “We were up 20 points going into the fourth quarter. With who we have in the locker room, that has to be a win. In the NBA, that has to be a win and you have to find a way. We have enough. It showed, we played three quarters. That’s all I can say, we played three quarters and we came up short.”
The Heat has been working to improve its defense, which has been statistically mediocre, for most of the season. Miami entered Tuesday with the league’s 14th-best defensive rating and eighth-best offensive rating.
This is an unusual spot for the Heat to be in, as it has finished with a top-10 defense in four consecutive seasons. The last time Miami finished a season with a top-10 offense was in the final year of the Big 3 era in 2013-14.
“Maybe because we’re so good on offense, we kind of relax on defense,” Dragic said in attempt to find an answer for the Heat’s defensive lapses. “It’s unusual for us. We just need to tweak it a little bit. Our offense is going to be there because we have so many guys who can score. We’re an unselfish team. We pass the ball to each other. That’s going to be there. Now, we just need to get together as a group defensively.”
Haslem agrees.
“We definitely got to defend,” Haslem said. “That’s the M.O. of this organization since I’ve been here. Even in the years we struggled to score, we’ve been able to defend. We’ve got to figure that out.”
Aside from improving defensively, the Heat also has to find a way to stack together road wins to gain confidence away from home before the playoffs. Miami has not won consecutive road games since defeating the Nets on Dec. 1 and the Raptors on Dec. 3.
“We’re bad on the road,” Adebayo said. “And we’ve got to figure it out. And until we figure it out, we’re going to keep losing to teams on the road.”
The good news for the Heat is eight of its next 10 games come at home, where it has been dominant with a 23-3 record this season.
But with the Heat just a few weeks from clinching a playoff spot, improving defensively and becoming a better road team are two things that must happen for Miami to have any success in the postseason. The clock is ticking, with only 25 regular-season games remaining.
“The hard part is when you’re making the same mistakes over and over, that’s called insanity,” veteran wing Andre Iguodala said. “I think we got a competitive group of guys and we got a coaching staff that drives the points home and just drives it constantly of how can we improve. So it’s just something you have to go through. You keep knocking your head. .... We’ll get it at some point. It’s just when.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2020 at 11:13 AM.
