Takeaways from blowout loss to Cavaliers, as injury-depleted Heat falls to 0-3 trip
Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 113-87 blowout loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers (10-6) on Sunday night at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse to fall to 0-3 on its four-game trip. The Heat (7-10) closes the trip on Monday against the Minnesota Timberwolves (8 p.m., Bally Sports Sun) on the second night of a back-to-back:
To earn a win over a quality Cavaliers team, the undermanned Heat needed close to a perfect performance. Sunday’s display was far from perfect and it resulted in the Heat’s most lopsided loss of the season.
With just 10 available players amid a rash of injuries, the Heat was already facing an uphill battle against the Cavaliers. Cleveland entered as one of only five NBA teams with both a top-10 offensive rating and defensive rating after the offseason acquisition of star guard Donovan Mitchell.
The Heat — missing its top two scorers in Jimmy Butler and Tyler Herro, among others — made its situation even tougher with an unfortunate combination of three-point shooting and turnover struggles.
“It didn’t feel like we had a lot of juice and pop tonight, which we’re not making excuses for anything,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We just weren’t able to make those extra efforts on either end of the court and they really capitalized on all of that.”
The Heat shot just 2 of 15 from three-point range in the first half and 6 of 31 from beyond the arc for the game. Miami’s three-point shooting has been shaky to start the season, as it’s now ranked 23rd in the NBA in team three-point percentage this season at 33.7 percent after closing last season as the league’s top three-point shooting team at 37.9 percent.
“They were playing on the top side of all of our shooters and it requires extra efforts, extra focus to be able to get to second and third layers of your offense,” Spoelstra said.
“For the most part, they took us out of our actions with physicality and keeping our shooters from getting to the three-point line. But that’s one of the indications that we just didn’t bring the necessary energy, effort, execution, details, doing things with force to be able to get enough looks in our wheelhouse. We didn’t have enough opportunities at the rim, enough force at the rim, enough cuts, drives, things of that nature.”
Turnovers haven’t been a big issue for the Heat this season, but it was on Sunday. The Heat, which entered with NBA’s eighth-lowest turnover rate, committed nine first-half turnovers and 16 turnovers for the game that the Cavaliers turned into 28 points.
Rebounding was also a talking point following the game, as the Heat was outrebounded 49-30. But a large part of that was all of Miami’s missed shots, with the Heat shooting just 38.8 percent from the field to provide more defensive rebounding opportunities for the Cavaliers.
On the offensive glass, Cleveland finished with a narrow 13-11 edge.
After a competitive first quarter that the Cavaliers won 28-27, Cleveland opened the second quarter on a 23-5 run to pull ahead by 19 points. The Cavaliers ended up outscoring the Heat 31-15 in the second period to enter halftime with a 17-point lead.
The Heat never made a run back into the game, as the Cavaliers held a double-digit lead for the entire second half. Cleveland led by as many as 32 points.
Cleveland became one of the first teams to have sustained success against Miami’s 2-3 zone. With the Heat using zone for most of the game, the Cavaliers totaled 113 points on 53 percent shooting from the field.
“They made an adjustment in the zone by just driving it hard in the slots and they made a lot of threes also, kind of got us out of our defensive rhythm,” said Heat guard Kyle Lowry, who followed up Friday’s triple-double with nine points, four rebounds and three assists on Sunday. “They played fast, they kicked our butts on the glass also. It’s one of those games where they’re a really good team and we missed a lot of shots and turned the ball over like crazy. It was a tough one for us out there tonight.”
Heat starting center Bam Adebayo returned after missing the previous two games with a left knee contusion, finishing Sunday’s loss with a team-high 21 points on 7-of-14 shooting from the field and 7-of-7 shooting from the foul line, six rebounds and three assists in 27 minutes.
“Just a good old fashioned [butt] kicking,” Heat forward Max Strus said. “Just take that one and move on.”
Adebayo’s return and the Heat’s injury issues created an opportunity for Adebayo and rookie forward Nikola Jovic to play their first minutes together of the season.
Jovic, who started at center in place of the injured Adebayo in the previous two games, recorded seven points on 2-of-9 shooting from the field and 1-of-6 shooting on threes, four rebounds and five assists in 32 minutes.
The intriguing frontcourt combination of Adebayo and Jovic not only played their first minutes together, they also started Sunday’s game.
There were some flashes of the duo’s potential, with Jovic making a nice pass on the short roll to find Adebayo for an open baseline midrange jumper for the Heat’s first points of the game.
But with Adebayo and Jovic on the court together, the Heat was still outscored by four points in 17 minutes on Sunday.
“It was pretty good, especially because I was playing at the four,” Jovic said of playing alongside Adebayo. “Before that, I was playing five. Having Bam, who’s a big guy who’s going to rebound for us. I was there just helping him. I think at the start we looked really good.”
Duncan Robinson returned for the Heat after missing a game with an injury for the first time in his NBA career. But then he left Sunday’s loss with a new injury.
After sitting out Friday’s loss to the Washington Wizards because of a sprained right hand, Robinson returned to contribute seven points on 1-of-3 shooting on threes and one rebound in 21 minutes off the bench against the Cavaliers. But he left the game early, limping to the locker room with 9:33 left in the fourth quarter and never returning because of a sprained left ankle.
“I just landed on his foot,” Robinson said. “Rolled my ankle and landed on his foot. It happens a lot in basketball unfortunately. So it’s part of it. Thankfully it was my left one and not my right one.”
With the quick turnaround, Robinson’s status for Monday’s game in Minneapolis is certainly in question.
“We’ll see how he feels once we fly,” Spoelstra said. “None of us will really know until tomorrow.”
Robinson added: “I pride myself on being available. I’m going to work like crazy to flush it out, pump it out and just try to be ready whenever that time comes.”
As for Robinson’s sprained hand that kept him out of Friday’s loss to the Wizards, the reason initially given for the hand injury was that he sprained it when he caught his finger in another player’s jersey during Friday’s morning shootaround. Robinson clarified before Sunday’s game that he actually hurt his hand while playing a two-on-two game with teammates.
“It didn’t get caught in a jersey, it didn’t get cut by a jersey,” Robinson said. “It just got hit when we were playing two-on-two, and it wasn’t in shootaround like we were just walking through something. It was playing live.”
How hard was it for Robinson to accept that he would need to miss a game because of an injury for the first time in his NBA career?
“It was hard,” he said. “It was a tough decision. I couldn’t shoot. I couldn’t catch and I couldn’t shoot.”
Adebayo, Dewayne Dedmon and Robinson were the three players who returned after missing Friday’s game to give the Heat 10 available players on Sunday after having just seven available players in Friday’s loss to the Wizards.
There hasn’t been much good news on the injury front for the Heat lately. But the team received some positive news on Sunday regarding Jimmy Butler’s injury.
Butler returned to Miami after Friday’s loss to the Wizards to undergo further evaluation of his injured right knee and those tests came back clean, a league source told the Miami Herald on Sunday. He is considered to be day-to-day and he could return as soon as this week, with the Heat returning home to host the Wizards on Wednesday and Friday before hitting the road to take on the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday to open another four-game trip.
“It was really to get back there and get in our facility and do the necessary work around the clock,” Spoelstra said Sunday of Butler returning to Miami. “But the update I got today was promising.”
Heat guard Tyler Herro is also in Miami and missed his seventh straight game on Sunday because of a sprained left ankle.
“He’s not quite ready,” Spoelstra said when asked why Herro hasn’t joined the Heat on the trip.
Heat guard Gabe Vincent, who missed his second straight because of a swollen left knee, said he doesn’t believe his injury is “anything serious.”
“I think it’s more so the type of minutes I play,” Vincent said of what caused the knee issue. “I think I’m a pretty aggressive player, I think I take a lot of hits, I think I’m on the ground a lot, I use my body a lot. It’s the nature of it. It’s a physical game.”
The other three Heat players who missed Sunday’s game were Udonis Haslem (personal reasons), Victor Oladipo (left knee tendinosis) and Omer Yurtseven (left ankle surgery).
The Heat has one more opportunity to avoid its first winless four-game trip in more than a decade.
The last time the Heat went winless on a trip that lasted at least four games was when it went 0-4 on a four-game trip all the way back in March 2008. Miami finished the 2007-08 season with a 15-67 record.
The Heat will need to defeat the Timberwolves on Monday on the final game of the trip to avoid doing it again for the first time in nearly 15 years.
“We have a game in less than 24 hours,” Spoelstra said following Sunday’s loss. “We need to focus on that and putting together a much better game on the road. It would be a hell of a way to finish this trip with a win tomorrow.”
The Heat has dropped its last six road games and and is 1-6 away from home for the season.
This story was originally published November 20, 2022 at 9:22 PM.
