Takeaways and details from Heat’s road win over Pelicans, as Adebayo, Butler and Lowry shine
The Miami Heat’s six-game trip began with two losses, but it ended with four straight wins.
The Heat (36-20) extended its winning streak to four games with a 112-97 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans (22-33) on Thursday night at Smoothie King Center. Miami closed the six-game trip with an impressive 4-2 record and remains at the top of the Eastern Conference.
On the way to the win, the Heat dominated the third quarter for a fourth consecutive game. Miami outscored New Orleans 27-18 in the third quarter to turn a one-point halftime lead into a 10-point advantage entering the fourth behind a strong defensive effort that forced the Pelicans into six turnovers in the period.
The Heat has outscored its opponents by a combined margin of 62 points in the third quarter during its four-game winning streak.
“Our defensive activity was really good in that third quarter and that got us a little bit of a lead,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Then we executed and got the ball where it needed to go.”
Bam Adebayo led the way for the Heat on Thursday with another strong offensive performance that included 29 points on 13-of-21 shooting and 10 rebounds.
Jimmy Butler finished with 29 points on 9-of-16 shooting, eight rebounds, three assists, four steals and one block.
Kyle Lowry played the role of facilitator, recording 14 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists. It marks the second triple-double in his first season with the Heat and 20th triple-double of his NBA career.
“His stat padding finally paid off,” Butler joked. “Any time my guy gets a triple-double, I’m happy for him because he plays basketball the right way and he’s always looking to kick the ball ahead and then he’s always down there stealing the big’s rebounds.”
The Pelicans still hung around for most of the night, cutting the deficit to four with seven minutes left in the fourth quarter.
But that’s the closest that the Pelicans would get, as Lowry hit a three and Butler made a midrange jumper to push the Heat’s lead back up to nine a few minutes later.
CJ McCollum, who was traded from the Portland Trail Blazers to New Orleans this week, finished his Pelicans debut with 15 points on 6-of-21 shooting, seven rebounds and five assists.
There was a scary moment for the Heat in the win, though.
Starting forward P.J. Tucker limped to the locker room in the second quarter, with the Heat listing him as questionable to return because of a left knee contusion. But he returned to play 14 minutes in the second half, finishing the win with three points, three rebounds and two assists in 27 minutes.
“Hes a warrior. He banged knees, so he’s going to be really sore tomorrow,” Spoelstra said. “He basically cursed us all out for suggesting that maybe he sit out the second half. You just see how tough he is. He’s able to compartmentalize and he just gave us some great minutes in that second half.”
The Heat was without Tyler Herro (right knee soreness), Caleb Martin (left Achilles soreness, Markieff Morris (return to competition reconditioning) and Victor Oladipo (right knee injury recovery) against the Pelicans.
The Heat now returns home to face the Brooklyn Nets on Saturday. With Miami already playing an NBA-high 32 road games this season, 17 of the Heat’s remaining 26 regular-season games will be played at FTX Arena.
Here are five takeaways from the Heat’s win over the Pelicans:
The Heat’s leading trio of Adebayo, Butler and Lowry again led the way.
Adebayo, Butler and Lowry combined for 72 points on 58.7 percent shooting. The rest of the Heat’s roster scored 40 points on 34.3 percent shooting.
The Heat outscored the Pelicans by 22 points in the 20 minutes that Adebayo, Butler and Lowry played together on Thursday. New Orleans outscored Miami by seven points in the other 28 minutes.
Adebayo, who has matched his career-high of 21 shot attempts in two of the last three games, continued to take an aggressive offensive approach. He has averaged 28.1 points on 19.5 shot attempts per 36 minutes in his last five games, which is up from his season averages of 20.4 points on 14.7 shot attempts per 36 minutes.
Butler scored eight points in five fourth-quarter minutes and finished Thursday’s win 11 of 11 from the foul line. He’s averaging the fifth-most free-throw attempts in the NBA at 7.9 per game behind only Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, James Harden and DeMar DeRozan, and owns the top free-throw percentage among that group at 89.4 percent.
Lowry seems to have found his rhythm after returning last week from a nine-game absence due to personal reasons. In his last three games, he has totaled 34 points on 21 shot attempts, 22 assists and just four turnovers.
“They did it, especially at key times,” Spoelstra said of Adebayo, Butler and Lowry. “Any time there was an opportunity for a momentum swing, they all made big plays. That was either Kyle knocking down a big shot, getting the ball where it needed to go, it was Bam scoring within the flow of our offense in those key moments. And obviously Jimmy was really good in that fourth quarter just creating a lot of opportunities and just gave everybody a sense of poise for our offense that we were going to be able to hold them off with the double-digit lead.”
The Heat is 13-5 in the 18 games that the trio of Adebayo, Butler and Lowry have played together this season.
“It’s all about winning with those guys,” Spoelstra added. “It’s not about the numbers, not about how many shots somebody gets. It’s not about playing on one side of the floor. It’s really competing on both sides of the floor, so they play winning basketball, which makes it a whole lot easier.”
The Heat played without two key reserves, which forced a tweak to the usual bench rotation.
Herro, who is the NBA’s leading bench scorer, and Martin, who has averaged 9.5 points and four rebounds largely in a bench role, missed Thursday’s game. Both were listed as probable to play against the Pelicans on Wednesday’s injury report before being downgraded to questionable on Thursday and eventually being ruled out.
“They’ve both been dealing with their own bodies,” Spoelstra said before Thursday’s game. “Tyler is feeling better, but he does need to go through the proper routine to see how he feels. I’ll meet with the training staff after he does that. Caleb has been grinding. Like a lot of guys, they can use a day here or there. We think it’s best right now to try to get him feeling better.”
Herro warmed up before the game, but the team made the decision to keep him out as an active scratch. It’s the second straight game he has missed with the knee issue.
Martin has missed two of the last four games with left Achilles soreness. He also sat out the Heat’s win over the San Antonio Spurs on Feb. 3 because of the injury.
With Herro and Martin unavailable, the Heat used a bench rotation of Dewayne Dedmon, Gabe Vincent, Max Strus and Omer Yurtseven against the Pelicans before emptying the bench late in the fourth quarter. It marked just the sixth game that Yurtseven has played in since Adebayo returned from injury 13 games ago.
That led to Spoelstra using the Heat’s seldom-used two-big lineups.
Entering Thursday’s game, the Adebayo-Dedmon pairing had posted a plus/minus plus-two in just nine minutes together this season. The Adebayo-Yurtseven frontcourt was a minus-four in only seven minutes together this season.
But the Adebayo-Dedmon and Adebayo-Yurtseven looks each logged minutes early in New Orleans.
Adebayo and Dedmon played the final 1:40 of the first quarter together, with the Heat outscoring the Pelicans 1-0 during that time.
The Adebayo-Yurtseven frontcourt received a more extended look, with the Heat outscoring the Pelicans 15-13 while they played the first 5:02 of the second quarter together.
Adebayo and Dedmon also played four minutes together in the second half, with the Heat outscored by two points during that time.
“It’s just the fact that we can do whatever is necessary,” Spoelstra said of playing two-big lineups in New Orleans. “If we have different guys out that we have the versatility to play different ways. I think the more different ways that you can play, it helps you eventually when you get to the playoffs because there’s so many unpredictable things. So it’s something that we’re gaining confidence with and when it’s necessary, we feel like we can get to it.”
The rested Heat is undefeated this season.
The Heat improved to 11-0 this season when playing a game coming of of two or more days of rest.
In comparison, Miami is just 2-7 on the second night of back-to-backs and 23-13 with one day of rest. The Heat plays seven more games this season after two or more days off.
Miami has also won seven of its last eight matchups against New Orleans.
Spoelstra and Butler will be on opposite sides next week.
Eastern Conference captain Kevin Durant and Western Conference captain LeBron James picked their All-Star teams with a draft on Thursday night.
Spoelstra and his staff are coaching Team Durant in the Feb. 20 All-Star Game, which is taking place at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland. But James selected Butler to be on his team with the 17th overall pick in a draft that included 23 selections.
“Ain’t nobody worried about Spo,” Butler said of playing against Spoelstra in the All-Star Game. “He better let me score every possession I get.”
The full teams look like this ...
Team Durant: Embiid, Ja Morant, Jayson Tatum, Andrew Wiggins and Trae Young as the starters, and LaMelo Ball, Devin Booker, Rudy Gobert, Zach LaVine, Khris Middleton, Dejounte Murray and Karl-Anthony Towns as the reserves.
Team LeBron: Antetokounmpo, Stephen Curry, DeRozan, James, Nikola Jokic as the starters, and Butler, Luka Doncic, Darius Garland, Harden, Donovan Mitchell, Chris Paul and Fred VanVleet as the reserves.
Durant will miss the All-Star Game because of a knee injury.
This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 9:56 PM.
