Takeaways from another big Heat win to vault Miami past Wizards, into first place in East
It was a battle for early-season supremacy in the Eastern Conference and the upstart Washington Wizards were no match for the battle-tested Miami Heat.
The Heat overcame a slow start and a mostly sloppy first half to run away from the Wizards in the third quarter for a convincing 112-97 win in Miami.
The win vaulted the Heat (11-5) into a tie for first place in the East with the Brooklyn Nets. The Wizards (10-5) entered the day as the first-place team in the conference, riding the East’s top-rated defense to one of the best starts in franchise history.
“Washington is a good team. We aren’t worried about first place. We got to keep chipping away,” Adebayo said. “It’s November now. We got to keep locking in and doing what we have to do.”
At first, Miami struggled to crack this defense. With high-scoring guard Tyler Herro sidelined by a bruised right wrist, the Heat couldn’t get its steady diet of midrange shots to fall and used its defense — top five in the conference in its own right — to stifle Washington out of the gates. Miami lead 21-19 at the end of the first quarter and 47-40 at halftime before finally erupting in the third quarter in front of a finally filled-in sellout crowd of 19,600 at FTX Arena.
The Heat went 14 of 22 in the third quarter and 7 of 8 from three-point range after going 2 of 14 in the first half. Post player P.J. Tucker hit three, wing Duncan Robinson drilled two, and guards Gabe Vincent and Caleb Martin each made one. On five of the seven threes, either Jimmy Butler or Bam Adebayo provided the assist.
Butler followed up his Wednesday triple-double with another all-around gem. The star forward scored 32 points — including 14 to keep Miami afloat in its sluggish first half — and handed out five assists. He shot 11 of 19 from the field and went 10 of 10 at the free-throw line.
Adebayo, who returned to the lineup after missing the last two games with a bruised left knee, came one rebound short of a double-double with 20 and nine boards. Vincent, who filled in for Herro as the sixth man, scored a season-high 18 points and Tucker added 15.
Here are five takeaways from the win:
1. Heat fights defense with defense. The Wizards entered Thursday with the best defensive rating in the Eastern Conference. Miami entered Thursday with the third best.
It certainly looked like it early. The Heat lead 21-19 at the end of the first quarter with neither team shooting better than 40 percent.
“Washington has established a way of playing,” coach Erik Spoelstra said. “They’re a very good defensive team. You have to really be intentional with your offense.”
Miami started to get rolling a little bit in the second quarter and eventually pulled away by scoring 15 points in the first five minutes of the second quarter, but the Heat won with defense.
By the midpoint of the third quarter, it was essentially a blowout. Miami pushed the lead to 61-48 with 7:32 left in the third and Washington never again cut the lead to single digits. The Wizards shot 59.5 percentin the second half, but were at only 43.4 percent by the time the Heat built its commanding lead.
Washington finished 49.4 percent percent from the field with 17 turnovers. Miami committed just six. It’s how the Heat managed to win despite not hitting its first three until nearly four minutes had passed in the second quarter.
Still, the second half left plenty to be desired for Miami. The team still feels like it has another level to reach.
“We have a lot of defensive lapses. I feel like we recover because we have a lot of intelligent players and some of us are very athletic,” Adebayo said, “but we’re just always rotating for each other, covering for each other, so that’s why it looks like we play intense D, but a lot of times we be out there figuring it out.”
2. Butler keeps making an early-season MVP case. Butler stood at the free-throw line with 5:29 left in the blowout the chants finally began. “MVP! MVP!” cascaded down from the crowd, which had been late to arrive because of flooding around downtown Miami, in appreciation of another fantastic effort for the its best player.
A day after putting up a triple-double to help the shorthanded Heat take down the lowly New Orleans Pelicans, Butler put together an even better performance against the formerly first-place Wizards. The numbers weren’t as spectacular — he had 32 points, five assists and three rebounds — but Miami desperately needed him to keep the team afloat early.
He scored 10 points in the Heat’s 21-point first quarter and made four of its eight field goals, and then drove Miami’s third-quarter run with his passing, dishing out four assists in the period as the Heat built a lead as large as 18.
All throughout, he made his usual share of plays on defense, jumping passing lanes for four steals and getting the first crack to star wing Bradley Beal. In the first quarter, Butler outscored Beal, 10-6, and helped force the All-Star into three turnovers. Washington jumped out to a seven-point lead and had a chance to pull away from the Heat early. Butler didn’t let it happen.
3. Right now, Tucker is a legitimate offensive asset. The Heat pulled away in the opening minutes of the third quarter by finally uncorking a barrage of threes on the Wizards and the cataylst was, of all people, Tucker.
The post player only had three games all of last season with at least three three-pointers. On Thursday, he drilled three in the pan of 3:14.
His first came off an assist from Butler with 9:07 left in the third to give Miami a 56-46 lead. A minute and a half later, Adebayo made a spectacular pass from the left block to the right corner where Tucker was wide open for another. With 5:53 left in the third, Butler got Tucker open for another three and the 36-year-old canned another to give the Heat a commanding 69-52 lead.
With his 3-for-3 performance Thursday, Tucker is now 45.2 percent from long-range this season. In all likelihood, he’s going to hit a slump at some point and crash back into the 30s — he has never shot better than 38.7 percent from three-point range in a season and that was way back in the 2013-14 NBA season — but Miami has figured out how to turn him into a much more dynamic offensive threat than he was last year when he was seldom even asked to shoot for the Milwaukee Bucks during their title run.
It was more than just threes for Tucker, though. At one point, he uncorked a deft post move, spinning down the right side of the line for a finesse finish. He went 6 of 7 from the field overall and even had a pair of assists during Miami’s big third-quarter run.
“It’s easy for the average fan just to say that he’s a three-and-D guy. That doesn’t do it justice, at all,” Spoelstra said. He’s a really smart, savvy, experienced two-way player and he’s versatile, so he can do a lot of different things.”
4. Without Herro, Vincent steps up. It’s hard to replicate Herro’s at-times irrational confidence. Vincent offered his own take in the second quarter Thursday.
A loose ball bounced out to the point guard at the top of the key and he saw an open lane to the basket. He took it and wasn’t content just to lay it in. He rose and flushed home a dunk through traffic to push the Heats lead to 42-37.
“I don’t think in any way I was trying to replace Tyler,” Vincent said. “I was just trying to make the most out of my minutes.”
With Herro sidelined by his bruised right wrist, Vincent took over in his fellow guard’s sixth-man role and filled in admirably. The 25-year-old finished with 18 to follow up a 13-point performance Wednesday while the Heat was missing Adebayo and Lowry.
Vincent has now played double-digit minutes in six straight games and at least 20 in 4 of 5. After frequently playing no more than four or five minutes per game early in the season, Vincent has finally looked like the rotation player Miami expected him to be in the preseason.
5. Heat keeps beating the East’s best. In the first two months of the season, the Heat has gotten cracks at the defending-champion Bucks, the first-place Nets and now the Wizards, and taken down all three.
Miami will get another crack at Washington on Saturday at Capital One Arena. The Wizards didn’t have point guard Spencer Dinwiddie or center Daniel Gafford on Thursday, and could have both back this weekend in Washington.
This story was originally published November 18, 2021 at 9:50 PM.
