Takeaways from Heat’s late comeback that fell just short vs. Hawks. And a P.J. Tucker update
The Miami Heat has two wins over the Atlanta Hawks since Jan. 12, but it couldn’t get a third.
Looking for its third victory over Atlanta in a span of 10 days, the Heat (29-17) fell to the Hawks 110-108 on Friday night at State Farm Arena.
The result comes after the Heat earned a 115-91 win over the Hawks in Atlanta on Jan. 12 and a 124-118 win over the Hawks (20-25) in Miami on Jan. 14.
“It’s like a seven-game series,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said following the loss of playing the Hawks three times in less than two weeks. “That’s how it felt.”
The teams’ third matchup was different than the first two.
The Heat’s final lead Friday came in the final seconds of the first quarter, as the Hawks controlled most of the game with their hot shooting.
Atlanta shot 55.9 percent from the field, 14 of 33 (42.4 percent) on threes and 20 of 24 (83.3 percent) from the foul line in the victory.
Despite trailing by 16 points with 9:16 left in the fourth quarter, the Heat didn’t go away quietly. Miami used a late 29-14 run to cut the deficit to only one with 55.1 seconds left.
The Heat nearly took the lead, too, as Adebayo found Jimmy Butler for an open alley-oop layup on a perfectly designed play coming out of a timeout.
“That was the play,” Adebayo said.
But Butler missed the clean layup that would have put Miami ahead by one point with 22.8 seconds to play.
“Things happen,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “It seemed like we had a few of those balls on that rim that just kind of went in and out. We probably had four or five of those in the second half. Those are just the breaks of the game.”
Hawks star guard Trae Young was then fouled and made one of two free throws to extend Atlanta’s lead to two points with 10.7 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.
With one final opportunity to either send the game into overtime or escape with the win, Butler missed a corner three with 5.6 seconds to play. Max Strus grabbed the offensive rebound, but could not convert on a challenging put-back attempt as he fell to the court and the final buzzer sounded.
“We got two fairly clean looks at it down the stretch and I really commend our group in the fourth quarter,” Spoelstra said. “Our guys did not have a lot of juice in this game and we didn’t have a deep rotation. But guys were just finding ways to gut it out in the fourth quarter and turn it into a possession game. That was really inspiring in that fourth quarter. We just weren’t able to get over the hump.”
Young led the Hawks with 28 points with the help of 12-of-15 shooting from the foul line.
On the other side, Butler finished with 13 points on 5-of-14 shooting, eight rebounds and eight assists for the Heat. Adebayo finished with a team-high 21 points, to go along with six rebounds and five assists.
Friday was only the Heat’s sixth loss in the past 21 games.
The Heat now returns home to open another four-game homestand on Sunday against LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. Miami is 15-5 at FTX Arena this season.
Here are five takeaways from the Heat’s loss to the Hawks:
The Heat’s defense had some success in the fourth quarter, but it was too late.
Miami struggled to stop Atlanta’s offense at the start, as the Hawks totaled 31 points on 13-of-18 (72.2 percent) shooting from the field and 4-of-8 (50 percent) shooting on threes in the first quarter.
By halftime, the Hawks had 60 points on 59.5 percent shooting from the field and 8-of-19 (42.1 percent) shooting on threes. It marked the 11th time that Miami has allowed 60 or more points in a first half this season.
The Hawks also went on to score 28 points on 56.2 percent shooting in the third quarter.
“We started the game slow and not really impacting the ball, not really hounding on defense,” Adebayo said. “I feel like they got in a flow to the point where shots started going in and they got up 16 in the fourth. Then we crawled back. I felt like if we don’t let that happen, we walk out with this win.”
The Heat’s defense found some solutions in the fourth quarter, limiting the Hawks to 22 points on 46.7 percent shooting and forcing five turnovers in the period.
But it proved to be too late for Miami to overcome its poor defensive start.
Despite a solid fourth quarter, Friday represents one of the Heat’s 10 worst defensive performances of the season. Miami finished with a defensive rating of 118.3 points allowed per 100 possessions, which is its ninth-worst single-game defensive rating of the season.
Along with improved defense, Adebayo and Duncan Robinson led the Heat’s fourth-quarter comeback on the offensive end.
During the Heat’s 29-14 run that began with 9:16 left to play and ended when it cut the deficit to one with 55.1 seconds left, Adebayo and Robinson combined to score 20 points on 8-of-11 shooting.
Adebayo totaled eight points on 4-of-6 shooting from the field and three rebounds during that stretch. Robinson scored 12 of his 19 points on 4-of-5 shooting from three-point range during the run.
That put the Heat in position to possibly steal the win, and Spoelstra drew up the perfect play to do so during a timeout.
With the Heat trailing by one point, Butler passed the ball to Adebayo at the three-point line and immediately cut to the basket as Gabe Vincent set a back screen on Butler’s defender. Adebayo threw a lob to the streaking Butler, but he missed the clean alley-oop layup with 22.8 seconds to play.
“Things happen. It’s a long game,” Vincent said when asked about Butler’s missed layup. “It’s a long game and we had 15 turnovers. So there’s a lot of things we did wrong throughout the game. We’re not going to isolate one play and get on one player. We’re not. ... We’ll execute down the stretch again and I’m sure he’ll make the next one, without a doubt.”
The Heat had another chance to either tie or win the game.
Trailing by two points, Miami had possession with 10.7 seconds left. But Butler missed the corner three-pointer and Strus then air-balled a shot attempt off an offensive rebound as he fell to the court and the final buzzer sounded.
The Heat is 13-8 in clutch games this season. A clutch game is defined as a game that has a margin of five points or fewer inside the final five minutes of the fourth quarter.
P.J. Tucker left the game early. As a result, Spoelstra used the Omer Yurtseven-Adebayo frontcourt for extended minutes for the first time.
Tucker started Friday’s game, but left with 3:56 remaining in the first quarter and never returned because of left knee irritation. Tucker missed four games in late December because of lower left leg nerve inflammation.
“P.J. wanted to [play] coming out of halftime,” Spoelstra said. “We just told him we got to think big picture. The knee irritation was a little bit stiff. We’ll give him treatment and evaluate him when we get back to Miami.”
That led Spoelstra to open the second half with Yurtseven in Tucker’s place alongside Adebayo in the frontcourt. Before Friday, the pair of big men had only appeared for a few seconds over four games this season.
With Adebayo and Yurtseven on the court together, the Heat was outscored 17-13 in the first 6:46 of the third quarter.
“I thought it was pretty good minutes for a group we haven’t really worked with,” Spoelstra said of the Adebayo-Yurtseven look. “But they both understand our system, both understand our strengths and we held the fort pretty well during those minutes.”
That was the only stretch Yurtseven played Friday. He finished the loss with four points and two rebounds in 6:46.
Since Adebayo returned earlier this week from a seven-week absence, Yurtseven has been out of the rotation. The rookie center’s only playing time in the previous two games were when he entered to play the final 7.4 seconds of the first half of Wednesday’s win over the Portland Trail Blazers.
Yurtseven, who spent the first month of the season out of the rotation, played in each of the 22 games that Adebayo missed.
The Heat remained without two of its best players.
Starting point guard Kyle Lowry missed his third straight game because of personal reasons and sixth man Tyler Herro missed his second straight game because of the NBA’s health and safety protocols.
The Heat has not offered an update on Lowry and there’s no definitive timetable for his return.
Meanwhile, Herro is also expected to be unavailable for Sunday’s game against the Lakers as his five-day quarantine runs through Monday. If Herro is able to meet the requirements to exit protocols early next week, he could return for Wednesday’s matchup against the New York Knicks at FTX Arena.
The Heat was also without Markieff Morris (return to competition reconditioning), KZ Okpala (wrist sprain) and Victor Oladipo (knee injury recovery) against the Hawks.
The Hawks were missing Bogdan Bogdanovic (knee soreness) and Danilo Gallinari (ankle soreness).
Vincent and Strus continue to show their growth from last season.
Vincent was never 100 percent last season after knee surgery, and he shot just 30.9 percent on threes as his playing time fluctuated.
Strus seemed to never catch a rhythm despite flashing his potential last season, shooting 33.8 percent from three-point range.
But after both were promoted from two-way contracts to standard deals this past offseason, they’ve looked like improved players.
Starting in Lowry’s spot for the third straight game, Vincent finished with 14 points and nine assists.
Strus finished Friday’s loss with 15 points and four assists off the bench. He scored all 15 of his points in the first half.
This story was originally published January 21, 2022 at 10:09 PM.
