A look at what went wrong for Heat in opener, with East finals rematch vs. Celtics on deck
Jimmy Butler gave an honest answer when asked if there were any positives he took away from the Miami Heat’s season opener.
“We got the regular season started and I think that’s the only positive thing about it,” Butler said.
That’s because the Heat (0-1) began the season with a disappointing 116-108 loss to the short-handed Chicago Bulls on Wednesday night at FTX Arena. The Bulls won despite missing two of their best players, with starters Lonzo Ball and Zach LaVine held out because of injuries.
Following the game, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra and players all pointed to defensive miscues and turnovers as the team’s biggest issues in the defeat.
They weren’t wrong, as the Heat allowed the Bulls to score 37 points on 15-of-22 (68.2 percent) shooting from the field in a third quarter that swung the game. Chicago outscored Miami 37-27 in the period with the help of 19 points from Bulls star DeMar DeRozan, breaking a halftime tie to enter the fourth quarter with a 10-point lead and eventually hold on for the win.
Making the defense look even worse than it actually was, the Heat also committed 13 of its 19 turnovers in the second half that led to empty possessions to allow the Bulls to finish the game with 13 more field goal attempts.
“We weren’t making multiple efforts and the next-play speed to make the third and fourth effort that was necessary, we weren’t getting to that,” Spoelstra said, as the Heat’s schedule now gets even tougher with an Eastern Conference finals rematch against the potent Boston Celtics (1-0) on deck Friday at FTX Arena (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun and ESPN).
“Then DeRozan just got fully into his comfort zone. He seemed like he was dribbling right to his sweet spots without any kind of duress. That’s not only our defense, he’s a great offensive player. But when you’re dealing with great offensive players, there’s going to have to be those kind of extra efforts on top of that just to get him out of his sweet spots and we did not handle that well. Then we had a lot of turnovers in that second half that just kind of compounded those defensive miscues.”
Butler added: “We were just lazy overall with our passing, getting back and our communication. We were everywhere and none of it was correct.”
And Butler’s co-star Bam Adebayo believes the Heat didn’t play to its identity after finishing last season with a top-five defense.
“We were turning the ball over and then we were just giving up easy baskets in transition,” Adebayo said. “We were letting guys get one-on-one baskets and we don’t ever leave our teammate on an island.”
But the Heat’s defense and turnover problems weren’t the only issues that stood out in the opener:
▪ The Heat’s new starting lineup of Kyle Lowry, Tyler Herro, Butler, Caleb Martin and Adebayo was outscored by 13 points in 17 minutes of court time together on Wednesday. Defense was the biggest issue for this group, as the Bulls totaled 50 points on 18-of-31 (58.1 percent) shooting from the field and 5-of-12 (41.7 percent) shooting on threes during this 17-minute stretch.
▪ Lowry, 36, began the season with a quiet performance that included just two points on 1-of-7 shooting from the field and 0-of-5 shooting from beyond the arc, five rebounds and four assists in 35 minutes. He took just two shots in the first half and posted a usage rate (an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while on the court) of 12.1 percent in the loss that was the lowest on the Heat’s roster among the nine players who logged extended minutes in the opener.
When asked why he wasn’t as involved as others on the offensive end, Lowry said: “The game was flowing around other players. I think those guys had it going earlier and my teammates had it going earlier. My job is to get those guys in the right spots and make some open shots when I get them. Tonight was not that night for me. But it’s a long season and I’m sure I’ll get better.”
▪ Following a sensational preseason, Adebayo struggled to make shots in the first game of the regular season with 12 points on 5-of-15 shooting from the field and committed a team-high five turnovers. He missed a bunch of shots around the basket that he usually makes, finishing 1 of 6 on non-rim paint shots on Wednesday.
“That’s an anomaly. He was missing point-blank shots,” Spoelstra said. “What that could have done is possibly gave us little bit more of a cushion in that first half. But that happens. Even if he made some of those, that still wasn’t going to overcome what we weren’t able to defensively in the second half as a group. We’ll clean that up.”
▪ The Heat’s half-court offense was essentially as bad as its third-quarter defense. Miami scored just 83.9 points per 100 halfcourt plays in the opener, according to Cleaning the Glass. The Heat was 4-15 last season when scoring fewer than 85 points per 100 halfcourt plays.
▪ The Heat dropped a game that it almost always won last season after shooting better than 40 percent from three-point range on Wednesday. Miami closed last season with a 32-2 record when shooting 40 percent or better from deep, but is already 0-1 in those games this season.
There were a few bright spots for the Heat, though.
Butler still looked like Butler, finishing with 24 points on 11 field-goal attempts with the help of his relentless foul-drawing ability to end the night at 14 of 16 from the free-throw line. Herro was sharp on the offensive end with 23 points on 15 field-goal attempts and committed only one turnover. Max Strus didn’t miss many shots off the Heat’s bench, recording 22 points while shooting 5 of 7 from three-point range.
“It’s an offense driven league,” Butler said. “I don’t think anything is wrong with that. But that doesn’t mean that we have to be like everybody else. We can be really, really good at offense, but also be really, really good at defense. So we got to get back to that.”
After weeks of hard practices in the preseason, the Heat spent Thursday studying the film from Wednesday’s loss in the middle of a stretch that includes three games in four nights.
“It will be good to have a film day and a teaching day,” Spoelstra said. “We haven’t really had one of those in training camp since we had a lot of practice time. We’ve basically just been hitting the wood and trying to prepare that way. So I think a good teaching session is probably appropriate right now.”
The Heat returns 13 players from last season’s roster that lost to the Celtics in Game 7 of the East finals. But following Wednesday’s ugly result, Miami isn’t focused on the rematch narrative surrounding Friday’s matchup again Boston.
For the Heat, it’s simply about putting together a more complete performance to avoid an 0-2 start.
“Just to bounce back from tonight,” Herro said when asked about Friday’s showdown against the Celtics. “Not really making it a personal matchup with them. We’re just worried about ourselves this early in the season. We’ll see them, I’m sure, in the playoffs again at some point. So just worried about ourselves, watching film and we’ll get better on defense.”
