Bam Adebayo, zone defense lead Heat past Hawks to end road skid. Takeaways from the win
The Miami Heat’s road losing skid is over.
Despite not having star Jimmy Butler and a handful of others because of injuries, the Heat (10-11) managed to escape with a 106-98 victory over the Atlanta Hawks (11-9) on Sunday at State Farm Arena. Miami has won three straight after a 7-11 start to the season.
The result marked the Heat’s second road win of the season and snapped a seven-game skid in games played away from home. Miami stands at 2-7 on the road this season.
“Coach let us know that,” Heat forward Caleb Martin said when asked about ending the road losing streak. “He put that on the board, 1-7, which I didn’t even realize. I knew we were struggling on the road, but just to put it into perspective for us and see it on the board. Like he was saying, it’s pretty disgusting to us to see how good of a team we are and we’re 1-7 on the road.”
To end the road skid, the Heat needed another big game from center Bam Adebayo and a strong second-half defensive performance.
The Hawks were in control for nearly the entire of the first half, pulling ahead by as many as 11 points and entering halftime with a nine-point lead.
But the Heat opened the third quarter on a 20-6 run to rally and take a five-point lead. Miami ended up outscoring Atlanta 34-21 in the third quarter to enter the final period ahead by four points.
Adebayo totaled 14 points on 5-of-7 shooting from the field to lead the Heat’s third-quarter surge. Miami’s defense also limited Atlanta to 21 points on 6-of-20 (30 percent) shooting from the field and 1-of-9 (11.1 percent) shooting from three-point range in the period.
The Heat extended its lead to as many as 14 points in the fourth quarter to cruise to the victory.
Adebayo was the star of the game, finishing with 32 points on 13-of-20 shooting from the field and 6-of-6 shooting from the foul line and eight rebounds.
Martin was also excellent, continuing arguably the best stretch of his NBA career with 20 points, nine rebounds, four assists, two steals and one block for the Heat. He totaled 18 points in the second half.
The Hawks scored just 38 points on 31 percent shooting from the field in the second half. Miami outscored Atlanta 55-38 in the final two quarters.
The Heat’s 2-3 zone had a lot to do with its success, limiting the Hawks to just 0.81 points per possession on 57 zone possessions in Sunday’s win, according to Synergy Sports. Miami’s man defense wasn’t as good, as Atlanta scored 1.12 points per possession on 26 man possessions.
The Heat continues its four-game trip with a two-game set in Boston that begins Wednesday against the Celtics in a rematch of last season’s Eastern Conference finals.
Five takeaways from the Heat’s win over the Hawks on Sunday:
Adebayo again took on a bigger offensive role with Butler and others out.
In Friday’s win over the Washington Wizards, Adebayo finished with 38 points on 15-of-22 shooting from the field and 8-of-8 shooting from the foul line. It went down as the second-highest scoring game of his NBA career and he also set a new regular-season career-high for field goal attempts in a game.
Adebayo followed up that performance with 32 points on 13-of-20 shooting from the field and eight rebounds to lead the Heat to Sunday’s win.
“I’m in the flow,” Adebayo said. “Coach is playing through me, he’s letting me get to my spots. That’s what I’ve been working on this whole summer. Just getting to my spots and just being efficient.”
Like on Friday, Adebayo did all of his work in the paint. Each of Adebayo’s 15 made field goals on Friday came from inside the paint and each of his 13 made baskets on Sunday also came from inside the paint.
Adebayo is averaging career-highs in points (20.5 per game) on 53 percent shooting from the field this season. But he has turned it up a notch even higher recently, averaging 25.3 points and 10.9 rebounds in his last seven games.
“His confidence is growing,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “The skill set is something that he’s worked extremely diligently on for a long time and his versatility was on display offensively all across the board, whether he was setting screens and getting to the rim for lobs, whether he was bringing the ball up and initiating or attacking early in the offense, his dribble handoffs were really good tonight and then we played through him in the post when we needed to try to control the game a little bit.”
Heat guard Tyler Herro didn’t make many shots, but he impacted the game in other ways to record the first triple-double of his NBA career.
Despite shooting just 3 of 13 from the field and 0 of 8 on threes, he stuffed the stat sheet with 11 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists while committing just two turnovers to post a plus/minus of plus-7 in 40 minutes on Sunday.
It marked the first triple-double of Herro’s NBA career.
“Just trying to impact winning,” Herro said. “Obviously, people know me for my scoring and my ability to create shots. The shot hasn’t been falling, but just continuing to impact the game in different ways. I know that, honestly, scoring probably doesn’t make Spo as happy as he does seeing me impact the game in other ways. So just trying to do as much as I can to get wins.”
Herro, 22, has totaled just 22 points while shooting an inefficient 7 of 31 (22.6 percent) from the field and 2 of 18 (11.1 percent) on threes in the last two games. But he has dished out 20 assists to just seven turnovers during that stretch to continue to make a positive impact with a total plus/minus of plus-15 over the last two games despite scoring only 11 points in each one.
That represents growth from last season, when Herro scored 11 or fewer points in six regular-season games. He posted a negative plus/minus in five of those games.
“You can find different ways to impact the win even if shots aren’t going down,” Spoelstra said when asked about Herro’s triple-double performance. “I’m not sure that maybe two years ago that he would have been able to do it. He was such a really good and efficient playmaker for us tonight, especially in that second half.”
The possibility remains that Butler will join the Heat during this four-game trip.
Butler missed his sixth straight game on Sunday because of right knee soreness. Along with Butler, the Heat was also without Gabe Vincent (left knee effusion), Duncan Robinson (left ankle sprain), Victor Oladipo (left knee tendinosis) and Omer Yurtseven (left ankle surgery) against the Hawks.
That left 11 available players for the Heat on Sunday.
Butler did not travel with the team to Atlanta and remained in Miami working his way back from injury. But the hope is that Butler will join the Heat at some point during the trip to make his return, possibly as soon as Wednesday against the Celtics in Boston.
Spoelstra left the door open for that possibility when asked about Butler’s status before Sunday’s game against the Hawks.
“He’s able to get some really good work in Miami,” Spoelstra said. “He is definitely getting better and we’ll just see how the week goes.”
The Hawks were also missing some members of its core on Sunday, with starting center Clint Capela (dental pain) and key reserve Bogdan Bogdanovic (right knee injury recovery) unavailable against the Heat.
With so many players again out, the Heat went with a bench rotation that included two undrafted rookies. But the one experienced reserve used, veteran center Dewayne Dedmon, helped stabilize things for Miami.
The Heat’s bench rotation on Sunday included undrafted rookies Dru Smith and Jamal Cain, developmental forward Haywood Highsmith and Dedmon. All four are undrafted players.
Despite the inexperience, the Heat’s bench was a bright spot on Sunday.
Dedmon continued his strongest stretch of the season with a season-high 13 points on 6-of-7 shooting from the field to go with six rebounds in 14 minutes. Dedmon’s production as the backup center helped the Heat survive the non-Adebayo minutes on Sunday, as Miami actually outscored Atlanta by seven points with Dedmon in the game and Adebayo on the bench.
“Dewayne with that second unit was really good,” Spoelstra said. “He was protecting the basket in our zone, he’s our biggest guy and he played with force and physicality and was able to get a lot of stuff at the basket that were relief baskets for us.”
Rookie forward Nikola Jovic, who was deemed available and was in uniform, did not play on Sunday after starting the previous six games. He was listed as questionable for the contest because of right foot plantar fasciitis.
The Heat’s injury issues have depleted its bench, which entered Sunday as the league’s fifth-lowest scoring unit at 28.9 points per game. Miami closed last regular season as the NBA’s highest-scoring bench at 40.5 points per game.
The Heat only totaled 18 bench points in its win over the Hawks.
The Hawks are a different team than they were last season in part because of the lessons they learned from their playoff series against the Heat.
The Heat dominated the Hawks in the first round of last season’s playoffs, winning the series 4-1. Hawks star guard Trae Young could not solve the Heat’s switch-heavy defense, averaging just 15.4 points on 31.9 percent shooting from the field and 7-of-38 (18.4 percent) shooting on threes to go with a total of 30 assists and 30 turnovers in the series.
So the Hawks went out and traded for talented guard Dejounte Murray this past offseason to pair him with Young and form one of the NBA’s most dynamic backcourts.
“That we needed to get better,” Hawks coach Nate McMillan said of what Atlanta learned from last season’s playoff series against the Heat. “We needed to be more physical, we needed to be able to execute against a switching defense as Miami put on the floor. Basically, they switch one through five and they feel comfortable with their guards guarding bigs and their bigs guarding guards. They won that matchup. So we had to try to go out and get another player, which we did, to give us some extra firepower to attack that style of play.”
The Hawks entered Sunday’s game against the Heat outscoring opponents by 6.2 points per 100 possessions in the 448 minutes that Murray and Young had played together this season.
But the Heat outscored the Hawks by 8.4 points per 100 possessions in the 29 minutes that Murray and Young played together on Sunday. Murray scored 13 points on 5-of-16 shooting from the field and Young scored 22 points on 4-of-16 shooting from the field.
This story was originally published November 27, 2022 at 7:24 PM.
