Takeaways and notes from the Heat’s final seeding game. Next up: the playoffs
With the Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers just days away from beginning their first-round playoff series against each other, Friday’s game between the Heat and Pacers was anything but a true postseason preview.
Rotation players on both sides sat out even though the Eastern Conference’s No. 4 seed was on the line, with the Miami-Indiana playoff matchup already set and no real home-court advantage at Disney.
The result was a 109-92 Pacers win over the Heat to close the teams’ eight-game seeding schedule on Friday at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Lake Buena Vista. Miami (44-29) enters the playoffs as the East’s No. 5 seed after Indiana (45-28) clinched the No. 4 seed with the victory.
It marked the Pacers’ first win over the Heat this season in four meetings. Miami won the season series 3-1.
But all of that became an afterthought once Heat forward Derrick Jones Jr. suffered a scary injury and had to be taken off the court on a stretcher late in the third quarter. Jones fell to the ground after a hard collision in an attempt to run through a screen set by Pacers center Goga Bitadze with 1:05 remaining in the third quarter, as Jones’ left shoulder and neck absorbed the brunt of the contact.
Jones grabbed his neck as he laid face first on the court for more than five minutes, with Heat teammates and coaches standing and watching on with concern just a few feet away. Jones was rolled off the court on a stretcher, as he held a towel over his face.
“He got jarred in the shoulder-neck area. Obviously a little bit more than a stinger,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.
Following a postgame MRI, CT scan and concussion test, the Heat announced Jones suffered a neck strain and will be re-evaluated over the weekend. Considering the way Jones was wheeled off the court, this is positive news for him and the team.
The Heat held out Bam Adebayo (right knee soreness), Jimmy Butler (right foot soreness), Jae Crowder (right knee bruise), Goran Dragic (left ankle soreness), KZ Okpala (personal reasons) and Gabe Vincent (right shoulder sprain). In addition, Andre Iguodala did not play despite being available.
The Pacers also held out some of their key players. Victor Oladipo, Myles Turner and T.J. Warren did not play, and Jeremy Lamb (torn ACL) and Domantas Sabonis (left foot plantar fasciitis) remained out.
The Heat finished its eight-game seeding schedule with a 3-5 record.
The regular season is over. The Heat now has a few practice days before opening the playoffs with Game 1 of its first-round series against the Pacers on Tuesday at 4 p.m. (Fox Sports Sun, TNT).
Five takeaways from the Heat’s loss to the Pacers on Friday at AdventHealth Arena:
While a lot of Miami’s rotation players were held out, this was an important game for rookie guard Kendrick Nunn.
It was Nunn’s lone game opportunity to find a rhythm before the start of the playoffs. After playing in each of the Heat’s first four seeding games, he missed three straight because he was forced to leave the NBA bubble to tend to a personal matter.
But Nunn was able to play Friday in Miami’s eighth and final seeding game. He finished with 23 points while shooting 8 of 27 from the field and 1 of 9 on threes, two rebounds and four assists in 33 minutes.
“That’s the most important thing, just the minutes,” Spoelstra said. “I’m not even really evaluating. He’ll have some good days of work ahead.”
It has been a struggle for Nunn to find efficient offense at Disney, as he averaged 10.8 points while shooting 31.3 percent from the field and 20.7 percent on threes in the five seeding games he played in. Miami was outscored by 46 points in the 116 minutes he played during this five-game stretch.
“Honestly, it’s a little tough with being away from the game for so long and having COVID,” Nunn admitted, when asked if it has been a challenge to get on track. “It’s a lot of things held up against me. But I’m controlling what I can control. I’m back on the floor now and just trying to get in rhythm. Definitely get my conditioning up and I think I’ll be good. I felt pretty good out there today.”
Nunn has started in each of the 67 games he has played this season. But his recent struggles and the fact he had to miss the past week of games and practices because of his trip outside of the league’s campus have raised a question: Will Spoelstra stick with Nunn as a starter?
Dragic started in Nunn’s place in the previous two games and the results were positive.
The five-man group of Dragic, Duncan Robinson, Butler, Crowder and Adebayo has posted an impressive plus/minus of plus-33 in 51 minutes together this season. In the two games this lineup started this week, it was a plus-25 in 21 minutes.
Friday marked the end of an impressive streak for Adebayo. It also marked the end of Robinson’s streak.
With Adebayo held out of Friday’s game as a precaution with the start of the playoffs just days away, his streak of 158 consecutive games played came to an end. It’s the first game Adebayo has missed since sitting out an April 3, 2018 win over the Atlanta Hawks during his rookie season.
Adebayo’s streak goes down as the fourth-longest in Heat history behind only Glen Rice (174 consecutive games played), Grant Long (161 consecutive games played) and Norris Cole (160 consecutive games played).
When asked if he considered playing Adebayo for a few minutes Friday to extend the streak, Spoelstra said: “I thought about it, but we have bigger things in mind right now. We hope to have him for a long, long time and there are going to be a lot of other records he’ll be involved with and hopefully breaking some records. We just think it’s the best thing right now with what we have ahead of us.”
The 23-year-old Adebayo, who played in his first All-Star Game this season, ended the regular season with career-high averages in points (15.9), rebounds (10.2), assists (5.1), steals (1.1), blocks (1.3) and minutes (33.6).
In addition, Robinson’s impressive streak came to an end. He entered with a made three-pointer in a franchise-record 57 consecutive games, but he couldn’t extend that streak Friday with an 0-of-3 performance from deep in limited minutes.
Robinson logged just 13 minutes and did not play in the second half against the Pacers.
With so many players held out, Heat team captain Udonis Haslem made his first start of the season.
Not only did it mark Haslem’s first start, but it marked just the fourth game he has played in this season. It’s also only the second game Haslem has started since the 2015-16 season, with the other one coming in last year’s regular-season finale in Dwyane Wade’s final game on April 10, 2019 against the Brooklyn Nets.
Haslem, who is in his 17th NBA season and turned 40 on June 9, made the 500th start of his NBA career on Friday. He became the second-oldest player ever to start a game for the Heat, as Juwan Howard is the only older player who started for the team during the 2012-13 season.
“I didn’t even know that,” Haslem said of his 500th career start. “I was thinking about my rebounding record. I wanted to see if I could grab a couple more and then Bam has a little more time.”
Haslem, who is the Heat’s all-time leading rebounder, finished Friday’s loss with seven points and eight rebounds in 24 minutes.
Will it go down as Haslem’s final start ever? That’s still to be determined because he remains undecided on whether he’ll return for an 18th season.
“There will be a day, hopefully that’s not for a while, where I don’t have UD in my locker room as a player,” Spoelstra said. “I’m really going to miss that. That’s why I’m just enjoying all of these moments. He brings so much to this organization. And I don’t know if his leadership has ever meant more than to this group, on so many different levels. Our veteran players and then, obviously, our young players, he is the epitome of leadership on all levels.”
Butler is confident the Heat will have success in the playoffs. He’s also confident stars will join him in Miami down the road.
“I guess there’s some history between Miami and the Pacers,” Butler said during an interview aired Friday on ESPN’s “The Jump.” “You inherit that the second that you put on a Miami jersey or a Pacers jersey for that matter. But we embrace it. We love it. We don’t run from it. So I think it’s going to be very, very interesting.”
What does Butler expect from the upcoming series between the Heat and Pacers?
“For the Heat to win. I do expect that,” Butler said during the ESPN interview. “I think everybody on our roster and our organization and all our coaches, all of our fans think that the Miami Heat is going to get that one.”
What does Butler expect from the Heat during its playoff run?
“We can win this,” he said.
When ESPN’s Rachel Nichols pointed out the Heat is not one of the title favorites, Butler responded: “I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I’m speaking for myself, I don’t give a damn what anybody says. I think I can speak for my teammates when I say they don’t give a damn either.”
Butler, who missed four of the eight seeding games because of a sore right foot, averaged 16 points on 47.2 percent shooting, 6.8 rebounds, 4.8 assists and 2.8 steals in the four seeding games he did play in.
With the regular season coming to an end Friday, the 30-year-old Butler averaged team-highs in points (19.9), assists (6) and steals (1.8) in his first season with the Heat after forcing a sign-and-trade to Miami as a free agent last summer. He finished with the second-best plus/minus on the roster at plus-257 behind only Robinson.
For now, Butler and the Heat have a playoff run to worry about. But Butler is also confident there will be stars joining him in Miami down the road.
“I think it’ll happen. Only time will tell,” Butler said at the end of his ESPN interview. “I’m telling you, the organization is really good at getting what they want to win a championship. It’s gonna happen. We have all the key pieces. We have shooters. We got the youth. We got the vets. And I think, a little Miami sunshine never hurt anybody.”
With the Heat completing its regular season, its draft position is locked in.
After Friday’s loss to close seeding play, 10 teams will finish with better final regular-season records than the Heat. That means Miami will have the 20th pick in the Oct. 16 NBA Draft.
The Heat is not allowed to trade its 2020 pick because its 2021 first-round selection was already dealt as part of the 2015 Dragic trade. The NBA doesn’t allow teams to be without consecutive future first-round picks.
But Miami could technically make a draft pick for a team and then include that player in a trade.
What’s known at the moment is the Heat owns the 20th pick in this year’s draft.
The last five players selected at No. 20: Matisse Thybulle in 2019, Josh Okogie in 2018, Harry Giles in 2017, Caris LeVert in 2016 and Delon Wright in 2015.
This story was originally published August 14, 2020 at 6:36 PM.
