Takeaways from Heat’s most lopsided loss of season, as Spoelstra calls defeat ‘unwatchable’
This is not how the Miami Heat wanted to begin its six-game trip.
Not only did the Heat start the long trip without three starters in Jimmy Butler (right big toe irritation), Kyle Lowry (personal reasons) and P.J. Tucker (left knee irritation).
But the short-handed Heat (32-19) also couldn’t overcome the absence of those three starters, as it fell to the Boston Celtics 122-92 on Monday night at TD Garden for its most lopsided loss of the season. Paired with Saturday’s triple-overtime loss to the Toronto Raptors, it’s the first time that Miami has dropped consecutive games since defeats on Jan. 2 and 3.
The loss also pushed the Heat down from first to second place in the Eastern Conference, with the Chicago Bulls now percentage points ahead of Miami.
“It’s hard to evaluate anything in this game,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We played about seven good minutes of basketball and the rest of it I would love to just put it in a dumpster truck. The rest of it was just unwatchable and uncharacteristic for us.”
The Heat faced an uphill battle from the start, as the Celtics (27-25) opened the game on a 21-7 run and led by 15 early in the second quarter. Miami battled back as it often does to tie the score, 32-32, just a few minutes later.
The Celtics controlled the game from there, as the Heat never led.
Boston responded to Miami’s second-quarter surge with a run of its own to enter halftime with a nine-point lead. The Celtics then outscored the Heat 40-25 in the third quarter to pull away and enter the final period ahead by 24.
The Heat shot just 39.1 percent from the field in the loss. Max Strus scored a team-high 27 points on a career-high nine made threes.
Meanwhile, the Celtics were led by 49 combined points from the duo of Jaylen Brown (29 points, four rebounds and two assists) and Jayson Tatum (20 points, 12 rebounds and five assists).
Along with missing Butler, Lowry and Tucker, the Heat was also without Markieff Morris (return to competition reconditioning), KZ Okpala (right wrist sprain), Victor Oladipo (right knee injury recovery) and Omer Yurtseven (health and safety protocols) on Monday. That left Miami with just 10 available players in Boston.
The Heat is back at it again Tuesday against the Raptors in Toronto (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun). It will not only mark the second night of a back-to-back, but also the Heat’s fourth game in five nights.
“We’ve been through a bunch of stuff within the last 72 hours,” Spoelstra said. “I’m not saying that as an excuse. We just need to get some rest and get on to Toronto.”
Here are five takeaways from the Heat’s loss to the Celtics:
Three-pointers have been a key part of the Heat’s winning formula while short-handed this season. But the shooting wasn’t good enough to negate other offensive issues against the Celtics.
The Heat shot 17 of 44 (38.6 percent) from three-point range against Boston.
That’s not bad. It just wasn’t enough to overcome 39.5 percent shooting on two-point attempts, 19 turnovers that the Celtics turned into 24 points and Boston’s 18-7 edge in points scored at the free-throw line.
It didn’t help that Boston essentially negated Miami’s three-point success. The Celtics shot 16 of 42 (38.1 percent) from beyond the arc, with the Heat using its 2-3 zone defense for most of the night.
Aside from Strus’ 9-of-17 performance from three-point range, the rest of the Heat’s roster combined to shoot 8 of 27 (29.6 percent) from deep on Monday.
Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson each shot 2 of 8 on threes in the loss.
“I knew we had to get them up,” Strus said of the threes. “The goal was to shoot 45 of them as a team. So I knew me and Dunc were going to have to shoot at least 10 each. So looking at the game, I knew that I was going to have to get some threes up.”
The Heat owns the NBA’s top team three-point percentage this season at 37.7 percent.
Without Butler, Lowry and Tucker, the Heat could have used a big game from center Bam Adebayo. But foul trouble got in the way.
After scoring just two points in the first quarter, Adebayo started to get going late in the first half with six points in the final 2:54 of the first half. Adebayo then remained aggressive to open the second half with four points in the first 1:47 of the third quarter.
But Adebayo’s momentum came to an end when he was called for his fourth foul with 8:38 left in the third quarter. Adebayo also picked up a technical on the play, as he argued the call while walking to the bench.
Adebayo re-entered with 2:04 remaining in the third quarter, but he didn’t score again the rest of the way. He was eventually subbed out for good with 5:03 left in the fourth quarter with the Celtics ahead by more than 20 points and the start of Tuesday’s game less than 24 hours away.
Adebayo finished with 12 points on 5-of-11 shooting, five rebounds, five assists, three steals and one block in 32 minutes.
With only 10 available players, the Heat’s bench rotation included a few who hadn’t played much recently.
The absence of three starters in Butler, Lowry and Tucker forced the Heat to use its 16th different starting lineup of the season: Gabe Vincent, Robinson, Strus, Caleb Martin and Adebayo.
The bench rotation included Herro and Dewayne Dedmon.
But Kyle Guy, who is on a two-way contract, and Chris Silva, who signed another 10-day deal on Monday as a COVID-19 replacement player, also played off the bench to complete the Heat’s nine-man rotation.
Guy, who did not play in the previous two games, played his most minutes since Jan. 19. He finished with four points on 1-of-5 shooting in 18 minutes.
Silva, who did not play in eight of the previous nine games, played his most minutes since joining the Heat in late December. He finished with two points, nine rebounds, three assists and one block in 19 minutes.
The Heat’s only remaining available player on Monday, Udonis Haslem, entered the game with 5:03 left in the fourth quarter and the Celtics already in control.
The Heat is working to navigate the back end of a rare but grueling stretch that includes four games in five nights, with a triple-overtime loss mixed in there.
Butler and Tucker were ruled out a few hours before Monday’s game because of injuries, but the busy stretch and heavy workload was also a factor.
Butler and Tucker played 52 minutes and 41 minutes, respectively, in Saturday’s triple-overtime loss to the Raptors. It marked the first time Butler, 32, has played more than 50 minutes in a game as a member of the Heat and the most minutes Tucker, 36, has played this season.
“He’s looking at the bigger picture,” Adebayo said of Spoelstra’s decision to sit Butler and Tucker on Monday. “That’s what it’s all about, the bigger picture, the big dance and getting to the playoffs.”
The belief is that Butler and Tucker’s injuries will be short-term issues and they could potentially play Tuesday against the Raptors. Butler missed his 19th game and Tucker sat out his seventh game of the season on Monday.
“Look, we have to manage a lot of different things this season,” Spoelstra said. “I think everything we’ve already experienced is giving us a little bit of a better experience and direction on what to do. But there’s no perfect plan. We landed [Sunday], just wanted everybody to get treatment, get some rest and then figure out our plan of action for tonight.”
As for Saturday’s triple-overtime loss to the Raptors, Spoelstra was still thinking about it two days later.
“I’m a head coach, so we tend to beat ourselves up quite a bit,” Spoelstra said before Monday’s game when asked about Saturday’s 124-120 defeat. “I’m totally fine right now. I also can remove myself from that and just be grateful for that whole experience. I think it’s really important for our team. I would have certainly loved to have been on the other side of it. We had five or six opportunities in the game to probably really take control of it.”
It marked the Heat’s first triple-overtime game since the 2011-2012 season and just fourth triple-overtime game in franchise history.
“You can be disappointed, you can be frustrated, you can lose sleep over it like a head coach would,” Spoelstra said. “But also the other side of it, you can really be grateful for those experiences. I think it was the best basketball game of the year. It was super competitive, a lot of compelling things and I think we’ll also learn from that, as well.”
This story was originally published January 31, 2022 at 9:51 PM.
