Without Butler and Herro, Heat falls to Nuggets. Takeaways and details from the loss
Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 120-111 loss to the Denver Nuggets (10-10) on Monday night at FTX Arena to begin a quick two-game homestand. The Heat is 13-8 this season:
As expected, Nikola Jokic was booed a lot by the FTX Arena crowd.
The reigning NBA MVP was booed when he was introduced and any time he touched the ball on Monday after shoving Heat forward Markieff Morris to the court from behind in retaliation to a hard foul on Nov. 8 in Denver. Morris has not played since the incident, missing his 11th straight game because of whiplash stemming from Jokic’s push.
Jokic’s two brothers, Strahinja and Nemanja Jokic, were seated right behind the Nuggets’ bench in Miami.
But with security heightened surrounding Monday’s game because of the recent bad blood between the two teams, the contest was relatively uneventful. There were no on-court scuffles.
“To me, there’s nothing really to address. What happened, happened,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said before Monday’s game. “Nikola served his suspension. He showed remorse after the game and it’s 10 games later. Much has been made about the Jokic brothers coming to Miami. It’s irresponsible, in my opinion, because they come to Miami every year. When the schedule comes out, who doesn’t come to Miami?”
Jokic, who missed the previous four games because of a sprained right wrist, finished with 24 points on 9-of-14 shooting, 15 rebounds and seven assists in 33 minutes. The Nuggets outscored the Heat by 17 points with Jokic on the court and was outscored by eight in the 15 minutes he spent on the bench.
Morris watched the game from the Heat’s bench in street clothes.
“It’s in the rear-view mirror,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said before Monday’s game. “I’m sure NBA security has sent the full team down here. Everybody’s going to be on high alert, including the officials.”
Along with missing Morris, the Heat was also without its top two scorers against the Nuggets.
Starting wing Jimmy Butler (tail bone contusion) and sixth man Tyler Herro (overall body soreness) both missed Monday’s game.
Butler suffered his injury on a hard fall during Saturday’s win over the Chicago Bulls. He was able to finish that game, recording 18 points on 6-of-15 shooting, four rebounds, five assists and five steals in 36 minutes.
“We kind of anticipated that he would be really sore yesterday and today,” Spoelstra said before Monday’s game.
Monday marked the fourth game that Butler has missed this season, with the Heat now 2-2 in those games. He sat out three games earlier this month because of a sprained right ankle.
As for Herro, Spoelstra said before Saturday’s win in Chicago that Herro was “under the weather.” It marks the second straight game that Herro has missed because of the illness and the third game he has missed this season after also sitting out the Heat’s Nov. 18 win over the Washington Wizards because of a bruised right wrist.
Butler entered averaging team highs in points (23.6), steals (2.1) and minutes (34.2) this season.
Herro entered as the NBA’s leading scorer off the bench and ranked second in scoring on the Heat behind Butler with 21.8 points per game this season.
The Heat was also without Morris, Victor Oladipo (right knee injury recovery) and Marcus Garrett (G League assignment) on Monday.
The Heat’s top-five offense did not look like a top-five unit without Butler and Herro to start Monday’s game. But Bam Adebayo helped bring Miami’s offense to life in the second half.
Miami scored 23 points on 37.5 percent shooting in the first quarter and 20 points on 33.3 percent shooting in the second quarter to enter halftime trailing 63-43. Those 43 points are tied for the second fewest that the Heat has scored in a first half this season.
But even without its top two scorers, the Heat managed to generate efficient offense in the second half with Adebayo leading the way.
Miami tried to fight its way back into the game with a 35-point third quarter. The Heat shot 56 percent from the field behind 15 points on 7-of-10 shooting from Adebayo in the period.
Miami then scored 33 points in the fourth quarter on 12-of-18 (66.7 percent) shooting from the field and 7-of-11 (63.6 percent) shooting on threes in the period.
The result: The Heat put up a 68-point second half after scoring just 43 points in the first half.
Adebayo started just 1 of 6 from the field, but finished with a team-high 24 points on 11-of-19 shooting, 13 rebounds and six assists.
“The ball started going in the hole. That’s the bottom line,” Adebayo said of his strong second half.
Max Strus ended the night with 19 points on 6-of-12 shooting from deep. Caleb Martin contributed 18 points and Gabe Vincent scored 14 points.
Kyle Lowry recorded 17 points and a season-high 14 assists.
The Heat tried to make up for the absences of Butler and Herro by taking more threes than usual. Miami, which entered averaging 33.7 three-point attempts per game, shot 15 of 44 (34.1 percent) from three-point range on Monday.
Duncan Robinson was responsible for a chunk of those misses, finishing with three points on 1-of-9 shooting from deep. He’s shooting 32.8 percent from three-point range this season after making 40.8 percent of his threes last season.
“Duncan knows exactly what he’s doing,” Strus said. “He just got paid $90 million, I think he is good enough. He’s an unbelievable shooter. He’ll be fine. It’s just a slump and he’ll get out of it.”
After Monday’s up-and-down performance, the Heat fell to sixth in offensive efficiency for the season.
Despite the Heat’s second-half surge, it was never really able to get close because of the Nuggets’ efficient three-point shooting.
Denver entered with the NBA’s fourth-worst team three-point percentage in the NBA this season at 32.6 percent.
But the Nuggets snapped their six-game losing skid by hitting 18 threes. Denver shot 18 of 35 (51.4 percent) from three-point range against Miami.
During the Heat’s offensive resurgence in the second half, the Nuggets shot 11 of 20 from deep over the final two quarters to remain in control.
Bones Hyland shot 5 of 8 from three-point range and Will Barton made 4 of 6 attempts from deep for the Nuggets.
Behind their outside shooting, the Nuggets scored 120 points on 58.1 percent shooting from the field while committing just 13 turnovers on Monday.
The Heat posted its worst single-game defensive rating (allowing 130.4 points per 100 possessions) of the season in Monday’s loss. Miami is ranked 10th in the NBA in defensive efficiency.
“Our defense is better than that,” Spoelstra said. “I think they played extremely well and then in those pivotal moments during the course of the game, it seemed like they made every shot and every play when there was any kind of momentum to start trying to get the thing under 10. That’s a credit to them.”
The closest the Heat got in the second half was within nine points in the final seconds of the game.
“Things picked up in the third quarter for us, but we still weren’t defending,” Spoelstra said. “They were scoring every single time. We never got to any kind of momentum of three or four straight stops.”
With a short-handed roster, the Heat tightened its rotation from nine to eight on Monday.
Miami went with a starting lineup of Lowry, Robinson, Martin, P.J. Tucker and Adebayo, with Martin filling the void left by Butler. This five-man combination had not been used this season before Monday’s game.
The Heat then used only three reserves until it emptied the bench in the final minutes, going with a bench rotation of Vincent, Strus and Dewayne Dedmon.
Miami has used a nine-man rotation in most games this season.
“It’s always tough. I had a bunch of different plans going into this,” Spoelstra said when asked why he used an eight-man rotation. “Then all of a sudden you get down 15, 18 points and that will change your plans pretty quickly.”
This story was originally published November 29, 2021 at 11:14 PM.
