Heat’s home winning streak ends on cold shooting night. Takeaways from loss to 76ers
The Miami Heat has overcome a long list of injury and COVID-19 issues to win a lot of games in recent weeks. On Saturday, the Heat faced another form of adversity.
The rare game that both Jimmy Butler and Kyle Lowry struggled to make shots in.
It proved too much to overcome, as the Heat (27-16) fell to the 76ers 109-98 on Saturday night at FTX Arena. The loss snapped Miami’s four-game winning streak and seven-game home winning streak, as it marked the Heat’s first home loss in over a month since Dec. 6.
Butler and Lowry combined to score only 16 points on 3-of-22 (13.6 percent) shooting. Butler finished with eight points on 1-of-11 shooting, five rebounds and nine assists, and Lowry finished with eight points on 2-of-11 shooting, two rebounds and seven assists.
To make matters worse, the Heat struggled to make threes. Miami, which shot 38.4 percent from the field, shot just 9 of 35 (25.7 percent) from deep in the loss.
“I still like those kind of games where you have to find a different solution and a different way to win,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “... We were still grinding and putting ourselves in a position to possibly have an opportunity to win it ugly.”
Despite its shooting struggles, the Heat somehow found itself ahead by 13 points with 7:42 left in the third quarter. But the 76ers (25-17) outscored the Heat 56-32 from there to pick up the double-digit win.
76ers star center Joel Embiid took control of the game with 32 points and 12 rebounds. Tobias Harris contributed 22 points and Seth Curry scored 21 points for Philadelphia.
The Heat’s bench outscored the 76ers’ reserves 39-15 led by 16 apiece from Tyler Herro and Caleb Martin. But Philadelphia’s starters outscored Miami’s starters 94-59.
The loss dropped the Heat from second to third place in the Eastern Conference.
The Heat continues its four-game homestand on Monday against the Toronto Raptors, as Lowry takes on his former team for the first time since signing with Miami last offseason. The Heat is 1-1 during the homestand.
Here are five takeaways from the Heat’s loss to the 76ers:
The Heat was not happy with its defensive performance in Friday’s win over the Atlanta Hawks, and its defense wasn’t sharp in the second half Saturday either.
After allowing the Hawks to score 118 points on 48.1 percent shooting, the 76ers totaled 66 points on 63.9 percent shooting in the second half just 24 hours later.
Embiid was the driving force behind Philadelphia success, as he put together a dominant second-half performance that included 25 points on 9-of-11 shooting after scoring just seven points on 3-of-11 shooting in the first two quarters.
“Score, rebound, force constant help,” Butler said of how Embiid took control of the game in the second half. “Be the dominant player that he has been for a very long time.”
The Heat’s defense started strong on Saturday, limiting the 76ers to just 43 points on 39.5 percent shooting from the field and 5-of-18 (27.8 percent) shooting on threes. But as Embiid forced Miami to send extra defenders his way, Philadelphia shot 8 of 14 (57.1 percent) on threes in the second half.
The 76ers ended up outscoring the Heat 66-48 after halftime.
Miami has featured a top-10 defense for most of the season and entered with the NBA’s eighth-best defensive rating, but center Bam Adebayo’s absence has been noticeable on the defensive end lately. The Heat owns the league’s 16th-best defensive rating since the start of January.
How rare were the inefficient shooting performances of Butler and Lowry? Very rare.
For perspective, Butler’s 1-of-11 night is tied for the second-worst shooting performance in his NBA career among games that he has taken at least 11 shots in. Butler’s worst shooting performance in his career was a 1-of-13 game as a member of the Chicago Bulls in a loss to the Heat on Jan. 27, 2017.
Lowry’s 2-of-11 game is tied for the 10th-worst shooting performance in his NBA career among games that he has taken at least 11 shots in.
“I don’t know. It’s part of the game,” Butler said when asked to explain his shooting struggles on Saturday. “You ain’t going to make shots every night. I don’t think myself or anybody else missing shots is going to break us in any way. I think if we guard a little bit better, lock in on that side of the floor, we’ll always give ourselves a chance to win.”
Heat rookie center Omer Yurtseven continues to make a strong case for a spot in the rotation even when Adebayo returns.
Yurtseven was very good again, finishing with 22 points on 10-of-12 shooting and 11 rebounds in a matchup against Embiid.
Yurtseven’s night began with one of the best quarters of his rookie season, as he recorded 10 points on 5-of-6 shooting, six rebounds, one assist and one block in the opening period. It’s tied for the highest-scoring quarter of his NBA career.
“I loved his minutes,” Spoelstra said. “O was very good throughout the course of the game. He was big in the paint, he rebounded well, he was pretty good on the pick-and-roll coverages, he was good probably through most of two and a half, three quarters of at least keeping a body in front of [Embiid].”
It has been quite the month-long stretch for Yurtseven, who has grabbed double-digit rebounds in 14 straight games. That’s the longest such streak by a rookie in Heat history and stands alone as the second-longest overall streak in Heat history behind only Hassan Whiteside’s string of 19 consecutive games in 2017.
It’s also the longest such streak by a rookie since Karl-Anthony Towns grabbed double-digit rebounds in 15 straight games in 2016.
Yurtseven, who has started 10 consecutive games, has averaged 11.6 points and 13.4 rebounds over the last 14 games.
With Yurtseven thriving during Adebayo’s absence, the Heat now has three centers on its roster who have a strong case for consistent playing time.
Obviously, Adebayo will return to the starting lineup when he comes back. But Spoelstra will have a decision to make between Dewayne Dedmon and Yurtseven for the center minutes off the bench.
Adebayo is expected back as soon as Monday against the Raptors after missing the past 22 games with a right thumb injury.
Duncan Robinson looks to be in the middle of another mini shooting slump.
In his fifth straight game off the bench after starting in his first 35 appearances this season, Robinson finished Saturday’s loss with two points on 1-of-9 shooting from the field and 0-of-8 shooting on threes. He has shot 3 of 20 from deep over his last three games.
“He has great resilience,” Spoelstra said of Robinson. “It will always be noisy, particularly for three-point shooters. Everybody just hangs on every make or miss. At the end of the day, his percentage will be up there where it is.”
Of Robinson’s bench role, Spoelstra cautioned “I wouldn’t look into anything right now. I get everybody wants to. But we’ve had so many guys out, plugging guys in that we’ve just been trying to hold the fort, win games and if we find momentum, just keep it going however we can.”
Robinson is shooting 34.7 percent from three-point range this season.
That’s not up to the all-world standards Robinson set for himself after he made an incredible 44.6 percent of his threes in 2019-20 and 40.8 percent of his threes in 2020-21. Only Sacramento’s Buddy Hield (553) and Portland’s Damian Lillard (545) totaled more made threes than Robinson (520) in those two seasons.
But Robinson wasn’t the only Heat player who struggled from deep on Saturday. Miami finished just 9 of 35 (25.7 percent) from three-point range against the 76ers, including a 3-of-16 display from beyond the arc in the first half.
That’s unlike the Heat, which entered with the NBA’s second-best team three-point percentage (37.8 percent) for the season.
Since the start of December, the Heat’s outside shooting has been especially great. Miami entered Saturday averaging a league-high 15.5 three-point makes per game on a league-best 40.5 percent shooting during that stretch.
As players return from injury and health and safety protocols, the Heat’s rotation continues to evolve.
After using a 10-man rotation in Friday’s win over the Atlanta Hawks, the Heat went with a nine-man rotation on Saturday: A starting lineup of Lowry, Max Strus, Butler, P.J. Tucker and Yurtseven with Herro, Dedmon, Martin and Robinson coming off the bench.
The one player who did not get in against the 76ers but played Friday was guard Gabe Vincent, who logged six minutes off the bench against the Hawks. The only other available player who did not play Saturday was veteran Udonis Haslem.
The Heat’s rotation will again change when Adebayo and others return.
Miami remained without Adebayo (thumb surgery), Marcus Garrett (wrist sprain), Kyle Guy (ineligible to play), Markieff Morris (return to competition reconditioning, whiplash), KZ Okpala (wrist sprain), Victor Oladipo (knee injury recovery) and Chris Silva (ineligible to play) on Saturday.
This story was originally published January 15, 2022 at 10:34 PM.
