Heat opens restart with a new starting lineup and a blowout win. Takeaways from the victory
It took almost five months, but the Miami Heat finally notched its 42nd win of the season.
Behind a dominant third quarter, the Heat (42-24) resumed its season with a 125-105 blowout victory over the shorthanded Denver Nuggets (43-23) on Saturday afternoon at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Lake Buena Vista.
It marked Miami’s first win since a March 8 victory over the Washington Wizards, with the season suspended on March 11 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
After an up-and-down first half put the Heat in a one-point hole entering halftime, Miami outscored Denver 38-22 in the third quarter to take control of the game. The Heat entered the final period with a 15-point lead.
The Heat shot 66.7 percent from the field and 4 of 7 on threes in the third quarter, while limiting the Nuggets to 41.2 percent shooting in the period. Denver also committed eight turnovers in the quarter.
Using various defenders — big and small — on Denver’s Nikola Jokic, Miami was able to keep the All-Star center in check. Jokic finished with 19 points on 7-of-16 shooting, seven rebounds and six assists.
The Nuggets were without three starters against the Heat, with guards Will Barton (right knee soreness), Gary Harris (right hip muscle strain) and Jamal Murray (left hamstring tightness) all unavailable Saturday. Murray (18.8 points per game) and Barton (15.1) are Denver’s second- and third-lead scorers, respectively, this season.
“Let’s be fair about it,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said following the win. “Denver hasn’t had their guys and they’ve had to mix and match and play huge lineups. They haven’t had an opportunity to have a three-week training camp. I’m not making excuses for them. [Nuggets coach Michael Malone] certainly wouldn’t want us to. But that is reality. They’re a different team if they have their full complement of players.”
The Heat plays its second of eight seeding games Monday against the Toronto Raptors at 1:30 p.m.
Five takeaways from the Heat’s win over the Nuggets to open its seeding schedule Saturday at HP Field House ...
The day began with somewhat of a surprise, as the Heat did not go with the starting lineup that owns the fifth-best plus/minus in the NBA.
Spoelstra went with a starting lineup of Kendrick Nunn, Jimmy Butler, Duncan Robinson, Jae Crowder and Bam Adebayo in its first seeding game. The surprise? Crowder replaced center Meyers Leonard in the starting group.
The move translated into a strong start, with the Heat opening the game on a 15-8 run before making its first substitution. And the success continued in the second half, with the group turning a one-point deficit into a two-point lead during the first 6 minutes and 21 seconds of the third quarter.
The Heat outscored the Nuggets 38-35 in the 15 minutes its new starting lineup featuring Crowder was on the court Saturday. The lineup was especially efficient offensively, shooting 13 of 21 from the field and 2 of 4 on threes with the help of eight assists.
Spoelstra indicated the Heat would use this group to start at least the next two games.
“We can switch a lot with that group of guys that we have on the floor,” Butler said of inserting Crowder into the starting lineup. “I think with Meyers out there, too, we’re still a really, really, really good team. Coach made a call. We talked about it. Who knows what we’ll have moving forward. But right now, I think that’s what we’re going with.”
Crowder was effective in his role, with nine points on 3-of-4 shooting on threes and seven rebounds in 29 minutes.
But the change to the starting lineup wasn’t expected, as it marked Leonard’s first game with the Heat as a reserve. Leonard started his first 49 games with the Heat this season before missing 16 consecutive games prior to the league shutdown because of a sprained left ankle.
The Nunn-Butler-Robinson-Adebayo-Leonard combination was the Heat’s most used starting lineup. The group has started 38 games — 30 more games than any other starting lineup the Heat has used this season.
The Nunn-Butler-Robinson-Adebayo-Leonard lineup has also posted an impressive plus/minus of plus-121 in 488 minutes this season. That’s, by far, the best plus/minus for any Heat lineup and the fifth-best plus/minus among all NBA lineups.
But this five-man group with Leonard did not fare well in the one Disney scrimmage it appeared in before the resumption of the season. The Heat was outscored by 10 points with this lineup on the court in Tuesday’s exhibition loss against the Memphis Grizzlies.
“Our starting lineup at the beginning of the year was one of the best lineups in the league,” Spoelstra said. “So I haven’t written that one off. But for this game and likely the next two, we felt like this would be the best way to go.”
Leonard is also still working his way back from a pretty serious ankle injury that forced him to miss extended time before the season was suspended. He scored nine points on 3-of-10 shooting in 37 minutes during the Heat’s three-game scrimmage schedule.
The change to the Heat’s starting lineup had a ripple effect on the rest of the rotation.
Leonard didn’t just lose his spot in the starting lineup, he also lost his spot in the rotation Saturday. Miami went with a 10-man rotation, using Goran Dragic, Andre Iguodala, Kelly Olynyk, Tyler Herro and Derrick Jones Jr. as its primary reserves until Solomon Hill enter
It marked Leonard’s first DNP-CD (did not play, coach’s decision) of the season.
“Look, this is one game. I have not forgotten about Meyers,” Spoelstra said. “He’s fully in our mix and it was just the way the game went tonight. I still had him on my card.”
With the Heat turning to a smaller starting lineup with Crowder in place of Leonard, Spoelstra opted to use Olynyk as Miami’s big man off the bench. This decision came after Olynyk’s strong showing in Heat’s Disney scrimmages, as he combined to score a team-high 51 points on 55.2 percent shooting from the field during the three exhibition games.
Olynyk finished Saturday’s win with 20 points on 8-of-11 shooting from the field and 4-of-6 shooting on threes. All of his points came in the fourth quarter, as Olynyk became the first Heat player to score at least 20 points in the fourth quarter since Dwyane Wade scored 24 fourth-quarter points on Feb. 28, 2009.
“He brings a skill level at the center position that’s unique to this league,” Spoelstra said of Olynyk. “His training camp has been very good, so he has had a lot of moments like this where he has played some of the best basketball. On any given particular day, he has been one of the top three players.”
The rotation Spoelstra used against the Nuggets also allowed the Heat to play all of its wings for double-digit minutes — Butler (30 minutes), Crowder (29), Iguodala (15) and Jones (12).
As has been the case for most of the season, Dragic was solid off the bench. The veteran guard scored 13 points and dished out five assists in 24 minutes.
The Heat had its full roster of 17 players available Saturday, but only up to 13 are allowed to be made active each game. Miami’s four healthy inactives Saturday: Kyle Alexander, Gabe Vincent, KZ Okpala and Chris Silva.
Even after arriving to the Disney bubble late because of a COVID-19 diagnosis, it didn’t take long for Adebayo to turn in a dominant performance.
Adebayo, who earned his first All-Star Game appearance this season, finished with 22 points, nine rebounds and six assists in 28 minutes. The Heat outscored the Nuggets by 19 points with Adebayo on the court.
This comes after Adebayo participated in just a handful of team practices and in just one of the Heat’s three scrimmages since arriving at Disney on July 21 — two weeks later than the team. Adebayo said feels “very close” to where he was before four-month layoff, but he also admitted “I did get a little winded at the end of the first.”
In the Heat’s dominant third quarter, Adebayo was a catalyst with seven points, three rebounds and three assists in the period.
“He’s a big component that makes us so dynamic,” Spoelstra said. “You don’t get to do this off of one week of practice time unless you’ve had an extremely high fitness level during the months of May and June. It was unfortunate that he missed the time, but that’s the deal with this world right now and the virus. You can’t control it. But he was really good on both ends.”
Miami’s other All-Star was sharp, too, as Butler finished the seeding opener with 22 points, four rebounds and seven assists in 30 minutes. He totaled nine points and two steals in the Heat’s big third quarter.
The Heat’s decision to prioritize its smaller lineups left it vulnerable on the offensive glass. It didn’t matter, though, because Miami’s offense was just too good.
Denver, which entered averaging the seventh-most offensive rebounds at 10.8 per game this season, won the offensive rebounding battle 13-6. The Nuggets turned its 13 offensive rebounds into 21 points.
But the Heat made up for the rebounding discrepancy with efficient offense.
Miami, which owns the league’s fifth-best offensive rating, shot 55.6 percent from the field and 13 of 29 on threes. The Heat also made 32 of 37 free throws Saturday.
The victory moved the Heat closer to third place in the Eastern Conference.
No. 4 Miami entered the restart 2.5 games behind the No. 3 Boston Celtics. But the Celtics’ loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday paired with the Heat’s win over the Nuggets pulled Miami within 1.5 games of Boston.
The Heat, which has already clinched a playoff spot, is also now 2.5 games ahead of the fifth-place Indiana Pacers and sixth-place Philadelphia 76ers. But that will change, with the Pacers and 76ers facing off Saturday night at 7.
Miami could pull even closer to Boston in a few days, with a game against the Celtics on Tuesday on the back end of a challenging back-to-back set that begins Monday against the Raptors.
This story was originally published August 1, 2020 at 3:46 PM.
