Lowry, Robinson break out to take down Bulls. Takeaways from another shorthanded Heat win
The Miami Heat, missing its two best players for the fifth time in the last six games, got another one of those wins that will have players and coaches raving about “Heat Culture” on Saturday, taking down another of the NBA’s best teams for an unlikely blowout win in Miami.
Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo — and still Markieff Morris and Victor Oladipo — were out with injuries. Caleb Martin was out after entering the league’s COVID-19 heath and safety protocols earlier in he day. Miami had only 10 healthy, active players and still managed a 118-92 rout of the nearly-as-shorthanded Chicago Bulls to close out a three-game homestand.
Point guard Kyle Lowry, the third option elevated into a leading-man role with the Heat’s two stars sidelined, finished with 12 points and 14 assists. Wing Duncan Robinson, the long-slumping sharpshooter, went 5 of 9 from three-point range — his third best mark of the year — and finished with 26 points. Miami (16-11) finished 19 of 43 from deep, dished out 37 assists and even got a season-high 20 points from typically low-scoring center Dewayne Dedmon.
Dedmon gave the Heat a 3-0 lead with a rare three-pointer on Miami’s first possession, delighting those of the 19,731 at FTX Arena who had already found their seats, and the Heat never relented against the Bulls, who were missing star forward DeMar DeRozan and six smaller contributors because of a COVID-19 outbreak. Miami raced out to a 39-25 lead by going 9 of 14 on threes in the first quarter with 12 assists and no turnovers. The Heat never trailed in the game and never led by fewer than 10 in the final 23:22.
Lowry and Robinson step up for shorthanded Miami.
No two potential Heat difference-makers have been more maligned this season than Lowry and Robinson, and their responsibilities have grown exponentially in the last two weeks with Butler and Adebayo injured. On Saturday, they each delivered perhaps their best performance of the season.
Robinson cracked 20 points for only the fourth time all year, hit at least five threes at home for the second time this season and posted his best single-game three-point percentage of the season, with a minimum of eight attempts.
Lowry flirted with Miami’s single-game assists record and finished with five short of tying the mark despite sitting out the entire fourth quarter of the blowout.
Together, they guided the Heat to a first-quarter eruption and Miami used its strong start to hold off Chicago.
“It was quintessential quarterback play from Kyle,” coach Erik Spoelstra said.
Added Robinson: “He has a unique ability to just find people in little moments, in little windows where they don’t even look like they’re open.”
Lowry scored or assisted on 16 of the Heat’s first 18 points before Miami made its first substitution and had seven assists in the first 10 minutes. He set up Dedmon for his three on the first possession of the game, then drilled one of his own to put the Heat up 6-3 after an early three-minute scoring drought and the floodgates opened. He assisted Robinson on a midrange jumper, then hit Dedmon on a pick-and-roll for a layup and teed up another three for Robinson to give Miami an 18-6 lead at the midpoint of the first quarter. The guard dissected the Bulls’ defense mostly by getting into the pant and kicking out to shooters, and, most importantly, those shooters knocked down their threes at a rate they rarely have this season.
The three-point barrage — Miami’s 19 was its third most this season — was mostly the product of Robinson’s best shooting performance of the year. Robinson, who was a career 42.3-percent shooter from three before this season and shot 44.6 percent from three only two years ago, was just 33.3 percent from deep in the first 26 games of this season and hadn’t had a game with more than five threes in nearly a month. On Saturday, he canned them early and often, going 3 for 4 in the first quarter to send the Heat out to its early lead.
“I don’t ever take credit anything because guys make shots. My teammates make shots,” Lowry said. “I put the ball where they can put it in the hole. When they put it in the hole, it’s an assist. I give credit to those guys to making the shots.”
With Butler and Adebayo missing, Miami has serious defensive limitations and will have to win with its offense. After it tied a franchise record with 22 threes Wednesday, the Heat hit at least 19 in back-to-back games for the first time in franchise history.
Dedmon does a little bit of everything.
The first-possession three was the most surprising moment of the game for Dedmon, but far from his only meaningful one. He even hit another in the second quarter while the Heat was running away from Chicago.
Dedmon’s double-double was his second of the season — it was actually only his third game of the year with double-digit rebounds — and he played his role as well as possible, especially since he was the only traditional center Spoelstra wanted to use Saturday. He muscled for rebounds on the interior and finished around the rim. He showed off some of his underrated floor-spacing ability with his two threes and another midrange jumper. Dedmon even handed out a pair of assists to Robinson, replicating a little bit of the dribble hand-off game Robinson and Adebayo typically rely on so much.
Dedmon will almost certainly be the starter until Adebayo returns from his injury next month and he’ll be the only true healthy big man — other than seldom-used center Omer Yurtseven — until either Adebayo or Morris return. Power forwards P.J. Tucker and KZ Okpala both logged a few minutes at center — and Okpala was again effective defensively — but Dedmon playing well enough to justify real starter’s minutes makes it much easier for Miami to juggle its center rotation.
“I always feel like I can play in the starting role, bench role — whatever it is. I’m just out here playing my game, just having fun and playing basketball,” Dedmon said. “It definitely helps you get into a rhythm the more minutes you get. It helps with your play, helps with your confidence.”
A potential early-season measuring-stick showdown between Eastern Conference contenders didn’t exactly materialize.
The Heat is ravaged by injuries, with Butler, Adebayo, Morris and Oladipo all out because of various maladies, both serious and minor. The Bulls are ravaged by the coronavirus, with seven players, including star forward DeMar DeRozan, out because of the league’s health and safety protocols.
Miami, which won 6 of 7 to start the season, has not been itself for the better part of two weeks, at least since Adebayo tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his right thumb last week against the Denver Nuggets while Butler was already dealing with a nagging tailbone injury. Chicago, which entered the weekend with the second best record in the East, has not been itself since at least Monday, when DeRozan entered health and safety protocols as part of a steadily growing outbreak.
For most of the year, the Heat and Bulls (17-10) have both played like teams headed for home-court advantage in the first round of the 2022 NBA playoffs with Miami once again looking like one of the best teams in the league and Chicago emerging as the league’s most unlikely potential title contender.
If they meet in the playoffs next year, the series probably won’t look anything like Saturday. With its two best players missing, Heat started guards Kyle Lowry, Gabe Vincent and Duncan Robinson, with centers Dewayne Dedmon and P.J. Tucker. The Bulls, also missing one of their two best players with DeRozan out, started a slightly more normal lineup with guards Lonzo Ball, Zach LaVine, Alex Caruso and Troy Brown Jr. around center Nikoa Vucevic.
Still, both teams were mostly devoid of depth and Chicago only got 18 points from its bench, with the majority in overtime. The Heat got 40 with 17 coming from guard Tyler Herro.
The Heat has its own COVID issues now, too.
A few hours before Miami tipped off against the COVID-stricken Bulls, Martin entered health and safety protocols, too. Martin, who scored a career-high 28 points in a stunning win against the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday, was in line to start again Saturday before he tested positive for the virus — it’s the only reason he’d enter protocols as a vaccinated player — to give the Heat its first real COVID scare of the season.
Martin will be out either 10 days or until he returns back-to-back negative PCR tests 24 hours apart. It’ll likely keep him out until at least Dec. 21 against the Indiana Pacers.
Spoelstra said he FaceTimed with Martin before the game and, “he’s frustrated.”
“C’mon, the guy came off the best game of his career as a professional athlete,” Spoelstra said. “He was preparing for this game to play and he felt like he could play. I understand his frustration, I feel for him.”
Spoelstra is also generally miffed with the NBA’s current policies, which can have fully vaccinated players miss more than a week of action even when they’re asymptomatic.
“I think we all have to figure this out right now,” Spoelstra said. “Are players missing games because they’re symptomatic? Are they asymptomatic? Has everybody gotten their shots and their boosters? Why would they be held out extensively longer than if they have the flu? I think there’s a contradiction there and if you just go hunting for, and add more testing and try to find things you probably will.
“I understand both sides of it. It is tough. There’s not like easy decisions by the league, by us, by the Players’ Association. These are tough decisions. We just have to continue to try to be vigilant as much as possible, be responsible, do what we can do and then see if this can take a different course than necessarily last year.”
The current issue for the team is the threat of an outbreak like the one Chicago is facing. The roster is fully vaccinated, which means Miami has not been testing regularly at home. On the road, teams do test regularly, however, and the Heat begins a four-game, seven-day road trip Monday against the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Heat will travel to Ohio on Sunday and testing could ramp up with Martin in protocols.
Miami was down to 10 players Saturday because of its injuries and Martin’s COVID situation. NBA teams require eight healthy, active players in order to play.
Right now, the Heat can’t take any wins for granted.
The Bulls had a major advantage with its starting lineup being mostly intact and the Heat had a major advantage with a reliable eight-man rotation.
It didn’t matter how strange the circumstances were, though. Miami just needs wins these days with Butler and Adebayo injured, and the Heat got two cracks at potential championships contenders this week and beat them both.
There was a danger Miami would tumble down the standings in a tightly packed East with Butler and Adebayo missing. Instead, the Heat won 2 of 3 on this homestand to remain in sole possession of fourth place and pull within a game of third-place Chicago.
This story was originally published December 11, 2021 at 10:20 PM.
