Tempers flare between Butler, Haslem, Spoelstra. Takeaways and reaction from Heat’s loss
Things got ugly for the Miami Heat on Wednesday, and not just because it dropped a second straight game to a team missing its best players.
Just a few days after falling to a short-handed Philadelphia 76ers team missing the All-Star duo of Joel Embiid and James Harden, the Heat (47-26) lost to a depleted Golden State Warriors squad playing without Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson 118-104 on Wednesday at FTX Arena.
The loss was painful enough, but a heated timeout huddle made the night even darker for the Heat.
Trailing by 13 points with 8:39 left in the third quarter, the Heat called timeout.
That’s when the frustration boiled over, as team captain Udonis Haslem had to be physically restrained from Jimmy Butler. An angry coach Erik Spoelstra threw down his clipboard and also had some words for Butler during the timeout.
“We have a very competitive, gnarly group and we were getting our [butts] kicked,” Spoelstra said of the tense moment. “That’s two straight games where we weren’t playing to the level we wanted to play. I would say virtually every single person in that huddle was pretty animated about our disappointment and how we were playing.”
The Warriors (48-25) led by as many as 19 points in the third quarter, but the Heat channeled its emotion in a positive direction to close the period on a 30-12 run to cut the deficit to just one entering the fourth quarter. Spoelstra left the starters in for the entire third quarter.
The Heat could not complete the comeback, though, as the Warriors built a nine-point lead with 4:44 remaining to take control and escape with the win. Golden State won the fourth quarter 37-24.
Even without some of their best players, the Warriors shot 51.9 percent from the field. Jordan Poole led the way for Golden State with a game-high 30 points on 7-of-13 shooting on threes and nine assists.
Three Heat players scored 20-plus points — Kyle Lowry finished with 26 points, Bam Adebayo finished with 25 points and Butler finished with 20. But it wasn’t enough.
With the loss, the first-place Heat’s lead over second place in the Eastern Conference standings was cut to 1.5 games with nine regular-season games left on the schedule.
The Heat, which has lost two straight for the first time since January, continues its four-game homestand on Friday against the New York Knicks.
“These two games were disappointing to everybody,” Spoelstra said. “I think that’s what you see, you see a competitive group that’s not playing to the level or the standard that we want to play at. Even with all the circumstances, it’s not like we come in here and say, ‘Oh, whatever. Let’s get the next one.’ That’s now how anybody in this building was wired.”
Here are five takeaways from the Heat’s loss to the Warriors:
Tempers flared between Butler, Haslem and Spoelstra during a timeout in the third quarter.
With the Warriors opening the second half on a 13-0 run to break a halftime tie and take a 13-point lead, the Heat called timeout with 8:39 left in the third quarter.
Things immediately got heated.
Spoelstra was visibly angry with how the Heat began the second half, and seconds later team captain Udonis Haslem had to be physically restrained from Butler. An upset Spoelstra threw down his clipboard and also had some words for Butler as the team walked back on the court with play about to resume.
“It’s crazy. But it’s passion,” Lowry said. “We’re in a situation where we have a lot of competitive guys and our biggest competitor is our head coach, and Jimmy and UD are tough competitive guys. It’s good to sometimes get some anger and frustration out and just talk about it. We’re going to have situations that make people uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, as long as we’re comfortable and we figure it out, that’s all that really matters. And as long as we’re still together, and we are.”
During the next timeout just a few minutes later with the Heat trailing by 15 and 6:42 left in the third quarter, players handled the Heat’s timeout huddle as the coaching staff and Haslem stood a few feet away.
This was an ugly public moment for the Heat. What prompted it?
“To be honest with you, losing basketball games,” Lowry said. “Stuff happens. They’re making shots, and frustration builds up sometimes. We had two games in a row where their better players and stars are not playing, and we lost. Frustration builds sometimes. I think it’s a situation where it’s good to get it out and move forward. We’re not going to dwell on it. We’re going to continue to look and see what happened and go from there.”
Spoelstra left the Heat’s starters in for the entire third quarter as they chipped away at the Warriors’ lead, which grew to as many as 19 points in the period. Miami entered the fourth quarter trailing by one point.
But the Warriors dominated the fourth quarter to prevent the Heat from completing the comeback.
“At the end of the day, we’re brothers,” Adebayo said. “We’re going to get through this. This is us in practice. It just so happened that it boiled over like that in a game. But in practice, we get to that point where it looks like we want to fight each other and we get that mad. But it’s just the competitive nature we have on this team.”
Heat forward P.J. Tucker added: “That’s us just figuring it out. Everybody. Emotions run high. I laugh, man. I walked off the court laughing. C’mon, let’s play. We’re grown men, man. This is a part of the game. I haven’t been on any team that emotions didn’t run over sometimes. Get back together, everybody loves each other. Blah, blah, blah.”
Butler was not made available to the media for comment.
The Heat’s bench struggled to score without Tyler Herro.
With Herro unavailable because of a sprained left knee, the Heat was without the NBA’s top bench scorer. It showed, as Golden State’s reserves outscored Miami’s bench 42-13
The Heat’s bench entered averaging an NBA-high 40.4 points per game this season.
Without Herro, the Heat went with a bench rotation of Max Strus, Markieff Morris, Victor Oladipo, Caleb Martin and Dewayne Dedmon on Wednesday.
Spoelstra said Herro was “just a little bit sore” from tweaking his knee in Friday’s win over the Oklahoma City Thunder and then playing through the pain to log 30 minutes in Monday’s loss to the 76ers.
The Heat’s bench also didn’t have guard Gabe Vincent, who sat out his second straight game because of a right big toe contusion.
Victor Oladipo returned from a two-game absence and logged a season-high in minutes.
Oladipo, who missed the previous two games with lower back spasms, finished with seven points on 3-of-11 shooting in 20 minutes off the bench.
Since Oladipo returned earlier this month after an 11-month recovery surgery to repair the quadriceps tendon in his right knee, he has played on a restriction of 15 to 18 minutes.
That restriction was loosened a bit on Wednesday, as he logged his longest shift since coming back from injury. He entered the game with 2:26 remaining in the first quarter and didn’t head back to the bench until there was 4:05 left in the second quarter to play 10 straight minutes.
Oladipo scored four points on 2-of-6 shooting from the field and 0-of-2 shooting on threes during that 10-minute stint in the first half. His points came on a driving reverse layup and a one-handed runner from the edge of the paint.
In the second half, Oladipo scored three points on 1-of-5 shooting from the field and 1-of-3 shooting from three-point range during another 10-minute stint.
In five games since returning, Oladipo has averaged 5.8 points while shooting 38.7 percent from the field and 3 of 14 (21.4 percent) on threes, 1.4 rebounds and 2.2 assists in 17 minutes.
Butler hasn’t made many threes this season. But he hit a few against the Warriors.
It took just 4:21 for Butler to make his second three of the game Wednesday and tie his season-high. Those were the only two threes Butler attempted.
Outside shooting hasn’t exactly been a strength for Butler, as he entered just 17 of 92 (18.5 percent) from three-point range this season. Among the 274 players who have attempted at least 90 threes this season, Butler ranked last with a three-point percentage of 18.5 percent prior to Wednesday’s game.
Wednesday also marked Butler’s first game with multiple threes since Jan. 3.
Three-point shooting has been a struggle for Butler since he arrived to the Heat. He shot 34.1 percent from beyond the arc in his first eight NBA seasons, but has made just 22.7 percent of his three-pointers since signing with Miami in the summer of 2019.
The Heat couldn’t take advantage of a very short-handed Warriors team.
Golden State was missing its leading trio of Curry (left foot sprain), Green (back injury management) and Klay Thompson (Achilles tendon injury management) on the second night of a back-to-back after falling to the Magic in Orlando on Tuesday. The Warriors were also without Andre Iguodala (low back tightness), Otto Porter Jr. (back injury management), Quinndary Weatherspoon (G League) and James Wiseman (right knee injury management) against the Heat.
The Warriors improved to 3-5 in games without Curry this season. Golden State has posted a 45-20 record in games Curry has played in.
This story was originally published March 23, 2022 at 10:10 PM.
